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Hannover, Germany, Rüschlikon,
Switzerland, 3 March 2008 — At the CeBIT 2008 tradefair
scientists from IBM's (NYSE: IBM) Zurich
Research Laboratory will present for the first time a pioneering
concept of a zero carbon emission data center achieved by the
direct reuse of waste heat. The first prototype is not only
extremely energy-efficient, but allows three-quarters
of the IT operating energy to be redirected to such uses as
to heat buildings. This is environmentally friendly and lowers
overall operating costs. A powerful new kind of water
cooling system embedded on the chip is the basis of this
innovation.
Challenges in the IT industry
Energy is an indispensable yet
increasingly precious resource. At the same time, it poses
a challenge to the IT industry. According to Gartner Group analysts,
the information and communications industry accounts for about
2% of global carbon dioxide emissions, which is equal to that
generated by air traffic the world over. The US-based
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory confirms that the worldwide
energy consumption of data centers amounts to some 120 billion
KWh, roughly equivalent to 14 typical power plants of 1000 megawatts
each. This energy is used to operate the data centers around
the world that constitute the backbone of our service
economy.
And the energy consumption of data centers is increasing.
Companies currently spend between 25 and 50% of their total
IT budget on data center operations. Indeed, data centers have
developed into oversized electrical heating systems. But
until now, it has not been possible to channel this energy to serve
as a direct supply of heat. Instead, this waste heat is
simply dissipated into the environment, meaning that
huge potential savings are not being realized.
Technological solution from IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory
Scientists at the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich now want
to change this. At the CeBIT 2008 tradefair in Hannover, Germany,
they will present for the first time the pioneering concept of
a highly energy-efficient data center that achieves
a zero carbon footprint by directly reusing its waste heat.
The researchers have designed an innovative energy and cooling
circuit, the basis of which is a new kind of water-cooling system
that is applied where cooling is needed the most — directly
on the chip.
The goal of the zero-emission data center model
is to reuse heat generated by the chip for heating buildings,
swimming pools etc. or simply for conducting the heat into a
municipal heating network. However, the most important requirement
for the direct use of heat is that the temperature of the waste
heat be above a certain threshold, which, for modern municipal
heating networks, is about 50 °C.
To accomplish this, IBM researchers used water, which can conduct
heat 4000 times better than air. This alone has an enormous
energy-saving potential. But integrating water cooling on the
chip, researchers were able to improve the cooling efficiency
by several orders of magnitude.
Researchers are now applying
this principle to their sophisticated cooling circulation:
using hot (45 °C) water, the powerful cooling system
is able to cool a chip to the typical operating temperature of
85 °C. This causes the
cooling water to reach a temperature of more than 50 °C,
and the water can then be used directly to provide heat to
a subsequent user. The entire cooling system is a closed circuit
in which the cooling water is constantly heated by the chip and
then cooled to the required temperature by delivering heat
to a subsequent user. This not only eliminates the use of energy-intensive
cooling systems, it also substantially reduces the data center's
power consumption.
The first prototype of the zero-emission data
center, a simplified model of which IBM researchers will
present at the CeBIT tradefair, already
reuses about three-quarters of the electrical energy needed for
IT operation and reallocates it, for example, to heat buildings.
This corresponds to a capacity to heat up to 70 homes, in addition
to a 40% reduction in energy consumption for a typical
1-MW data center.
Chips: increasingly powerful, but with constantly rising
temperatures
The demand for more powerful cooling is the result
of an enormous increase in heat flux with each new computer chip
generation. Theoretically, today's chips, in operation and without
any cooling, would reach a higher surface temperature than the
sun (about 6000 °C). In practice, of course, processors
could not function for even a fraction of a second without being
cooled to below 85 °C. This requires an extremely
powerful cooling system, for which air cooling systems are reaching
their limits.
In a data center with thousands of processors
operating in a small area, powerful cooling systems blow air
chilled to 14 °C through perforated floor tiles into the
server room. Between 30 and 50%
of the power required to run a data center is dedicated
to cooling.
The new water-based cooling system is the first
approach that makes sense from an ecological and economic perspective
and that would allow the meaningful use of waste heat. Water-cooled
data centers could become almost twice as profitable as air-cooled
centers, including purchase expenses, if new taxes are levied
on carbon dioxide emissions. This could offer new perspectives
throughout the IT industry, in addition to being good
for the environment.
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