IBM Corp. has unveiled a water-cooled "Hydro-Cluster" supercomputer it claims is five times faster than previous models while delivering a three-fold increase in energy efficiency. Based on IBM's latest Power6 microprocessor, the company said its new Power 575 supercomputer uses water-cooled copper plates above each microprocessor to remove heat. According to IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory, where the water-cooling mechanism was invented, water is up to 4,000 times more effective in removing heat from electronics, compared to air. Data centers using the Power 575 would require 80 percent fewer air conditioning units and 40 percent less power. IBM will reveal details of the energy efficiency of its Power 575 architecture at the upcoming ITherm 2008 (May 28 in Orlando, Fla.), a conference on the thermal cooling of electronic devices, packages and systems. IBM's Power 575 supercomputer uses 448 Power6 cores in a single rack with 3.5 terrabytes of memory, divided among 14 nodes each operating at 600 Gflops. Combined performance totals 8.4 trillion Tflops.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207100873
