SKIF-Aurora

Specialists of SKIF company RSK and Institute of program systems of RAS (INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM of RAS) developed the cooling system on hot water for the supercomputer platform SKIF-Aurora. The working platform sample on such cooling was recently shown on one of thematic actions.

The platform SKIF-Aurora on liquid cooling was developed by alliance which includes the Italian company Eurotech RSK SCYTHIAN, Institute of Program Systems of RAS, with assistance of the company Intel. In Europe Eurotech offers this platform under the name of Aurora. As reported Eurotech in 2009, Aurora, "SKIF of row 4" and SKIF-Aurora are different brands of the same product in the different countries.

The cooling system on hot water

Specialists of SKIF company RSK and Institute of program systems of RAS (INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM of RAS) developed the cooling system on hot water for the supercomputer platform SKIF-Aurora. The working platform sample on such cooling was recently shown on one of thematic actions.

Technology of cooling

The cooling system provided in October, 2010 is implemented at the level of printed circuit boards of computing nodes. Each of them is covered with the cooling plate in which the channel for water pass is made. It cools all chips of installation and heats up to 55 °C, further gets to the external heat exchanger where cools down by several degrees and comes back on the closed circuit.

Sergey Abramov, the director of the INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM of RAS and the research supervisor of the supercomputer program "SKIF-GRID" from Russia, in a conversation with CNews noted that initially SKIF-Aurora was developed under cooling with cool water, and the SCYTHIAN and INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS of RAS carried out by RSK development and tests of the scheme and the mode of cooling of SKIF-Aurora with hot water.

In original state in the cooling system of the platform external chillers on freon were used. In the modified option it is possible to do without them thanks to what the electric power consumption on cooling of a system was cut almost to zero, Abramov says. According to developers, the calculator based on this platform with all infrastructure, including cooling, consumes twice less electric power, than the systems of similar performance on air cooling, and for 35% exceeds on energy efficiency SKIF-Aurora with the cooling system on cool water. With this cooling system the supercomputer with a peak capacity of 500 of Tflops with all infrastructure, according to the estimates of developers, will consume about 1.5 Mvatt of the electric power. At the same time heat developed by the supercomputer, according to Abramov, can be reused, for example — for heating of buildings.

The chief executive of RSK SCYTHIAN Alexey Shmelyov said that the Russian specialists developed the cooling system on hot water and tested independently, without participation of the European partners. The representative of the company Oleg Gorbachev told CNews that within the agreement on alliance representatives of Eurotech company were notified on completion of works on development and tests of the cooling system on hot water, and all results and work materials were transferred to them for acquaintance.

Gorbachev also reported, in Russia RSK the SCYTHIAN has own design center which is engaged in the different directions of research and development. Assembly of such systems, according to the representative of the company, will be performed in Russia, and production separate a component - on manufacturing plants in Russia and abroad. "We order production a component at the plants capable to provide the highest quality of products. Unfortunately, not all production process meeting our quality standards it is possible to organize in the territory of Russia", - Gorbachev says.

The representative of the company also noted that the organizations which are actively using big computing powers already showed interest in the solution with the new cooling system. However, before, in more than one and a half years of the existence, the company officially started in Russia only two systems based on the platform SKIF-Aurora: in the INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM of RAS and the Southern Ural State University in Chelyabinsk.

Technologies analogs

In July, 2010 with cooling on hot water at the Swiss federal technology university in Zurich (ETH Zurich) announced start of the supercomputer IBM. However, in its platform water cooling is implemented not board-level as in SKIF-Aurora, and at the level of processors - copper microtubes with water are brought directly to their radiators. Cooling processors, water in microtubes heats up to 65 °C. As told then IBM, such cooling system consumes 40% less energy, than use of coolers with air blowing where for cooling of air water with the temperature of 7-10 °C is used. 9 kW of the thermal energy which is taken away from the supercomputer come to a building heating system of the university, it was said in the statement of the company.