On Wed, 5 Sep 2012, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote: > But as long as we're talking quarrys and such, what about the scheme of > building a big pit to fill full of ice during the winter, and melting it > during the summer. (assuming you are in a > less-than-wonderful-un-California-like climate where this would work.)
Or, just place all of your cluster in Antarctica. Or somewhere on the Greenland ice pack. Or in Tibet. There in any mountainous region where the cluster is up there 4 or 5 km at a mean air temperature that is "cold" so you don't need refrigeration, only circulation of outside ambient air. If you want to get all fancy, build your nodes so that they are weatherproof and sit underneath several square meters of solar panel and battery backing so that they run "for free" if you build them in a cold, high, desert like the Andes. The problem with all of these schemes is that they all cost too much compared to just buying a pod, lining it with over the counter shelving equipped with wiring harnesses back to a central power supply, sticking a few tons of AC on the ends mixed up with fans, and plugging the whole thing into a 440V grid. Need more capacity, add a pod. I recall that this almost perfectly describes Google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Modular_Data_Center except that they use larger shipping containers, not smaller ones, at least sometimes. They are pretty close to the chest with their actual technology. They solicited me a short while ago to come join their cluster group (which I could not do, being enormously overcommitted already with my own entrepreneurial gig and more) and I kinda wish I could have pursued it as it would be fun and profitable and if I had I'd know a lot more about how they rig things. But of course if I had done this I would have had to sign and NDA and hand over my firstborn son (or kill you) if I told you...;-) rgb > > > On 9/4/12 11:56 AM, "Douglas Eadline" <deadl...@eadline.org> wrote: > >> >> Of course those massive Zetta scale systems will live in huge >> multi-story oil tanks that have been placed in old quarrys, >> which provide bedrock support for the tank and a geothermal >> heat sink. The sysadmins must operate oil swimming robots and even don >> oil scuba suits to service hardware. Don't forget the Sterling engines >> using the heat from oil to return a bit of useful work to the system. >> >> -- >> Doug > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:r...@phy.duke.edu _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
