Benefits of RackCDU D2C for High Performance Computing

From bioengineering and climate studies to big data and high frequency trading, HPC is playing an even greater role in today’s society.  Without the power of HPC, the complex analysis and data driven decisions that are made as a result would be impossible. Because these super computers and HPC clusters are so powerful, they are expensive to cool, use massive amounts of energy, and can require a great deal of space. Thanks to Asetek’s RackCDU D2C™ (Direct-to-Chip), these limitations are being addressed one by one.

Lower Cooling Costs
Cooling costs from Computer Room Air Conditioners (CRAC) or Computer Room Air Handlers (CRAH) make up a large portion all data center energy. Because Asetek’s RackCDU D2C (Direct to Chip) liquid cooling reduces the need for these cooling units, costs associated with cooling can be reduced by over 50%. For example, universities are often challenged with choosing to spend their limited budgets on either increasing computer throughput or more powerful cooling equipment. By utilizing Asetek’s RackCDU, Mississippi State University was able to purchase a more powerful super-computing cluster than if they had relied solely on air cooling.

Power Savings
Data centers consume about 2% of all electricity in the US. Because such a large portion of that comes from cooling costs, overall data center energy use can be reduced by 21%. Further savings can be achieved by reusing the water generated from cooling the servers for building heat. Located in Norway, The University of Tromsø (UiT) is the perfect candidate for reuse of waste heat. Thanks to Asetek’s RackCDU, UiT is able to reuse the heat generated from the servers to warm adjacent buildings and reduce the overall power use of the university.

Higher Density
Density is particularly important in HPC and supercomputing applications where large numbers of servers work simultaneously on the same problem. RackCDU allows server density to be increased by 2.5x or more within the cluster. As a result, floor-space, rack infrastructure requirements and operating expenditures are reduced. The U.S. Army’s Sparkman Center Data Center at Redstone Arsenal located in Huntsville Alabama has been working to increase the density of its data center in order to fulfill requirements from the Department of Defense. Asetek’s RackCDU will enable them to meet these requirements by providing a 2.5x consolidation within their existing infrastructure.

RackCDU saves money, saves power, and saves space all while paying for itself in 0-3 years. If you’d like to see what RackCDU could do for your data center, visit our Savings Calculator. There, you will be able to enter the specifications of your existing air cooled data center and get an idea of the savings you could see with RackCDU. As always, feel free to contact us at questions (at) asetek.com to learn more.