This distinction has been awarded to GRC and TACC for the joint effort that brought a submersion cooling unit to TACC in May 2010 (read the case study here). The system stands as GRC’s first installation, effectively marking the launch of its product, the CarnotJet™ system.

The full press release is available below. May also be viewed via TACC and the Uptime Institute.

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The pump command is set close to 90% in this clip — for this particular system, that means more than 25kW of heat dissipation potential.

The remarkable thing is that despite the high density and the reduction in server power (from the removal of server fans), this HPC cluster has a PUE of 1.12!

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The press release is as follows:

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Supermicro 1U SuperServers (SYS-1026-GT-TF) submerged in a CarnotJet™ system rack

GRC received some great press soon after the CGGVeritas installation release. The release outlined the growing installation in Houston and the partnership between GRC and server manufacturer Supermicro.

David Chernicoff over at ZDNet wrote a piece entitled Submerge your datacenter, which does a great job introducing the CarnotJet™ technology to his readers. The article positions GRC as an alternative to free cooling and answers many of the questions asked by those just discovering the technology. Chernicoff absolutely hits the nail on the head with this statement:

While the basics of liquid cooling aren’t new, what GRC is bringing to the table is a cost effective solution that is self-contained and can make use of standard rack mounted servers from any OEM.

Rich Miller is no stranger to Green Revolution Cooling’s technology. Rich first published a piece on GRC after meeting the founders at SC|09 in Portland. Data Center Knowledge broke the news of the CGGVeritas installation with this piece: Submerged Supermicro Server Accelerated by GPUs

The CGG Veritas system uses Supermicro servers accelerated by dual graphics processing units (GPUs) and optimized for a submerged environment. The result is a powerful and highly-efficient cluster with densities of 25 kilowatts per rack, which doesn’t require room-level cooling and operates at a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.12.

Finally, Penny Jones of Datacenter Dynamics covered the story as well: CGGVeritas uses liquid cooled servers in HPC environment.

The vendors said that that overall, the solution can reduce energy consumption by 95% – removing the need for air conditioning – and provide 1,200 times more heat retention than air. Repurposed heat can also be captured by the Carnotjet submersion rack system.

As the install base at CGGVeritas increases in size, the power and cost savings become more and more striking. Servers and cooling are using less power and CGGVeritas is able to support systems that would be very difficult to cool otherwise.

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42U Rack filled with GPU-accelerated servers

Paul Rubens over at Enterprise Networking Planet wrote an article last week that looks at the current state of liquid cooling technologies available to data centers. The piece, Liquid Cooling Gaining in Popularity Again, presents some key reasons that liquid cooling is gaining traction in the data center:

…thanks to spiraling energy costs, corporate green initiatives and new high-tech coolants, the concept of liquid cooling in the data center is enjoying a renaissance.

While these can be factors in the decision to switch to liquid cooling, we find customers turning to our liquid cooling solution for other reasons. For example, the CarnotJet system offers:

• Lower upfront costs and lower build-out costs than air cooling
• Reduction of cooling power use by 90-95%, server power use by 5-25%, and overall data center power use by 40-45%
• The ability to cool the densest hardware available today, including GPUs, with support for up to 100 kW of compute per 42U rack

The article continues with a description of current dielectric fluids in use:

These liquids do not conduct electricity so they can be in direct contact with electronics without causing any damage, and since they are many times better than air at capturing and transporting heat they offer the prospect of dramatically more energy-efficient cooling than is possible using the conventional chilled air approach.

It’s no secret that GreenDEF™ dielectric fluid coolant is highly refined mineral oil. Unlike Fluorinert and other solutions of the past, our coolant is inexpensive — and because it’s essentially baby oil, it’s environmentally and human friendly. There’s also no risk of evaporation or spoiling, which allows for our easy-access open-system design.

Rubens does a nice job discussing the benefits of submersion cooling in the article:

The potential benefits of liquid cooling in are significant. For starters, a suitably designed system can capture almost all of the heat generated by a server’s components, so there is no need to power internal fans to assist airflow. That in itself can reduce server power consumption by about 30 percent. But the main savings come from reduced air cooling costs. Since heat from the servers is captured by the coolant and removed without warming the air around the server racks, there is little or no need for computer room air conditioning (CRAC) equipment. And since the electricity needed to power CRAC equipment, chilling plants and other cooling equipment may account for as much as 30 percent of data center running costs, the potential savings are enormous.

Removing server fans is an important energy-saving practice in our submersion cooling system. In a liquid environment, fans are obsolete! As GRC Founder Christiaan Best said in an interview at Texas Advanced Computing Center, submersion cooling replaces managed air flow with managed liquid flow. As Team Texas discovered at the Student Cluster Competition during SC’11, removing server fans can provide significant energy savings — typically 5-25%.

And because liquid so efficiently captures server heat and makes it accessible, it is also possible to reuse that heat. In November, Green Revolution Cooling announced heat recapture for data centers at KTH (Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm, Sweden. Working with GRC’s technology, researchers at KTH have achieved 50°C water output using commodity server hardware, a resource that can be useful year round. 

The article offers a paragraph about Green Revolution Cooling, specifically:

Green Revolution Cooling, a Texas-based based company, offers probably the most radical departure from traditional data canter cooling. Its CarnotJet system is based on the concept of dunking — literally placing an entire server rack into a tank of its GreenDEF coolant.

It may seem like a radical departure from the norm, but the dramatically reduced costs and increased performance are a welcome change.

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Christiaan Best, Founder and CEO of Green Revolution Cooling, sat down for an interview to talk about the installation at TACC that was first installed in April 2010. Best also gives some insight into the backstory of GRC — including the original inspiration for the product — and why he believes the CarnotJet™ system is the most efficient and cost-effective data center cooling solution available today.

Watch the video here:

In addition to the video, the featured article reveals why GRC brought the CarnotJet™ system to market in early 2010:

“Ten years ago, no one cared,” Best explained. “Power density was very low, the cost of hardware compared to cooling was much higher, and the number of overall servers was lower. But now, people who run data centers are starting to build dedicated buildings just to move the air though the computers. Where does this madness end? You can’t just keep shoving power into a box and expecting it to be cooled by air, which is fundamentally an insulator.”

With energy costs rising and society requiring more compute power and data services, Best saw renewed opportunities for liquid cooling technology if it could be turned into a cost-saving product for data centers.

The article goes on to discuss the partnership between GRC and TACC that has produced more than eighteen months of data:

In 2009, Green Revolution Cooling was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research program grant to support the benchmarking of its CarnotJet™ dielectric fluid submersion cooling system. In April 2010, GRC deployed the system at TACC’s data center on The University of Texas at Austin’s J.J. Pickle Research campus.

More than a year and a half into the collaboration, the results of system tests have exceeded expectations on both sides. According to measurements, the installation has consistently used three to five Watts or less of cooling power for every 100 Watts of server equipment used. Moreover, the fluid submersion cooling system has shown reductions in total power usage of approximately 40 percent compared to the same hardware cooled by air, despite the fact that the GRC system was installed on an unconditioned loading dock where the ambient air temperature is sometimes well over 100°F.

Finally, the article shares Best’s hopes for the future of high performance computing and efficient fluid-submersion cooling for data centers:

“So much of the datacenter is not focused on the silicon itself,” Best said. “By reducing the amount of infrastructure, I think it will allow scientists to spend more money on the silicon itself.

Best continues:

“If all data centers were able to reduce the amount of energy used on the scale that we’re able to achieve in HPC, then I think the world would be a different place.”

With a rapidly growing customer base that includes five of the Top-100 supercomputing sites and an installed capacity approaching one megawatt — not to mention a new Phase II NSF Grant — the future is looking bright for GRC.

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Green Revolution Cooling has been awarded a Phase-II National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to support the continued development of its high-performance fluid-submersion cooling system for data centers.

The grant comes two years after the Phase I grant from NSF and the funds will be used to streamline large-scale manufacturing of the CarnotJet™ system. In addition, the funds will be used for R&D to further optimize system performance and efficiency.

This is very exciting news for GRC. The continued support from NSF signifies the foothold that GRC has gained in the data center cooling market.

You can read the full press release here.

*****

Green Revolution Cooling Awarded NSF Phase II SBIR Grant

AUSTIN, TX, January 16, 2012 – Green Revolution Cooling (GRC) today announced that it has received a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The second-stage grant follows the Phase I grant received by GRC in November 2009.

Christiaan Best, CEO and Technical Founder of GRC, said: “We’re happy to be working with NSF again to continue the development of what we believe is the most powerful and efficient cooling solution available for the data center today. This funding will support advanced development of the next generation of efficient fluid-submersion cooling systems.”

Since the Phase I grant in 2009, GRC has been rapidly growing its customer base. Now approaching one megawatt of installed capacity worldwide, including installations at four of the Top-50 supercomputing sites worldwide, GRC continues to gain traction in the industry.

The Phase II grant signifies continued support for GRC’s next generation of fluid-submersion cooling systems. The majority of funding will support research and development to further increase efficiency and usability while streamlining the manufacturing process.

About NSF’s Small Businessss Innovation Research Grant
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program stimulates technological innovation in the private sector. Phase II awards are available only to recipients of Phase I funding. For more information, please visit: www.nsf.gov/eng/iip/sbir/

##

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The exhibit featured an assortment of literature and giveaways, including coolant samples and USB drives. The main attraction, however, was the 13U evaluation unit on display. We included a few servers for demonstration purposes and enjoyed talking to interested spectators.

Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of questions directed our way. Here are some common ones:

• Is that water? [Nope, it's GreenDEF dielectric mineral oil.]

• What do you do about hard drives and optical drives? [We encapsulate hard drives using a proprietary potting process. You can see a picture of one here. Our system does not support optical drives.]

• If the coolant captures the heat, where does the heat go? [The coolant is continuously pumped through a heat exchanger near the Rack where the heat is transferred to water.]

• Why do this at all? [We can save 10-25% of server power, 95% of cooling power, and 45% of overall data center power.]

It gets really exciting when someone begins to understand the technology and the potential for leveraging fluid cooling. The questions, too, get better and better.

• So you don’t need any infrastructure, could you install the CarnotJet in a parking lot? [Yes. We've installed in a loading dock and a closet, too. With our system, data center space can be much, much cheaper than usual.]

• Capacity is really a function of coolant flow, isn’t it? [Mostly. Bigger pumps and pipes means more flow which equates to more cooling.]

• Over-clocking becomes very simple doesn’t it? [Over-clocking servers is very possible in the CarnotJet system -- ultra-efficient fluid-submersion cooling allows you to dissipate much more heat than usual.]

Exhibitor Forum

On Wednesday afternoon, Christiaan Best, Technical Founder of GRC, delivered a talk on lessons learned from two-and-a-half years of fluid submersion cooling experience. His presentation emphasized the importance of providing cost savings and performance increases too significant to ignore when developing a new, disruptive technology.

Christiaan also released details on two new GRC installations. The first is a new installation at Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. Also the main news point of our most recent newsletter, KTH has achieved 50°C waste water using the CarnotJet™ system.

Christiaan also unveiled some preliminary details from our largest installation to date, CGGVeritas. Check back in the coming weeks for a full case study and announcement.

Student Cluster Competition

Another highlight of the show was the Student Cluster Competition. Students from the University of Texas at Austin participated in a series of HPC events that saw eight student-led teams compete to finish five application sets with the highest compute efficiency. In an effort to increase power efficiency (the teams were limited to twenty-six amps), the UT team utilized CarnotJet system technology to cool their equipment.

When the final results were revealed, the Texas team finished third, behind two teams (Taiwan and China) that were using GPU-accelerated servers. Congratulations to the students from UT for finishing so close to the top without the help of GPUs, and for demonstrating great skill with the programming challenges — best of luck now and in the future!

Poster Session

One final note from SC’11: all week on display in the exhibition hall was a poster detailing GRC’s first installation: a single Rack install at Texas Advanced Computing Center completed in April 2010. If you’re interested in some GRC history, follow the link below!

Green Revolution Cooling and Texas Advanced Computing Center Research Poster Displayed at SC'11, this poster details the results of Green Revolution Cooling's first installation at Texas Advanced Computing Center in April 2010.

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The CarnotJet fluid-submersion cooling system is the first to recapture nearly 100% of server heat without adding infrastructure costs. A single 20 kW rack with 42 servers can reduce heating costs by $15,000 annually.

One of the biggest barriers to efficiency in the data center industry today is the inability to recapture server heat without incurring extravagant infrastructure costs. Servers convert vast amounts of electricity to heat, most of which is wasted. Green Revolution Cooling is announcing the ability to recapture and reuse nearly 100% of server heat at a cost lower than most air cooling solutions.

A July 2011 installation at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm will reliably produce water up to 50°C (122°F) — hot enough to pump to surrounding buildings for building heat. Remarkably, this performance has been achieved with commodity servers and standard CPUs.

Unlike many cooling solutions, the ability to recapture and transport heat is a standard feature in the CarnotJet system. The system design is simple: OEM servers are installed in an open rack filled with dielectric fluid. The dielectric fluid circulates freely through the servers, removing heat to a Pump Module where it is exchanged to a standard water loop. Typically, that loop is run to an evaporative cooling tower to reject the heat to the atmosphere, but it is also possible, as KTH is proving out, to reuse the heat from the water.

As testing continues at KTH, researchers will strive to produce 70°C water, which could be used to produce hot tap water, a useful commodity all year long. And if 70°C is achieved, KTH will be able to recapture energy in addition to heat. Added to the energy savings produced by server fan removal, the system could outstrip even the most energy efficient CarnotJet system installations to date.

Testing has commenced with newer server hardware and we expect a full white paper by the end of the year.

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