Something to ponder.
Looking at some of the individual systems, the new champion of the Green500 is an interesting and admittedly small scale system out of Japan called TSUBAME-KFC. At 27.78 kW in power consumption and 150 TFLOPS, TSUBAME-KFC isn’t very powerful, but at 4,503 MFLOPS/W it’s by far the most efficient system on the list. The secret – and to our knowledge this is the only ranked supercomputer like this – is that TSUBAME-KFC is the only oil immersion supercomputer on the list. As we’ve seen in the past with systems such as Eurora, supercomputer builders are playing with increasingly exotic forms of cooling in order to keep power consumption down and to further increase efficiency, as the largest scale installations are bounded more by power/cooling needs than they are equipment costs.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7539/fall-2013-supercomputer-rankings-released-achiving-max-efficiency-with-oilWhat AM is using is way better than oil. Oil is extremely messy and still needs heat sinks etc.
With passive two-phase immersion cooling finally happening I don't think oil cooling has a very long lifespan. There are probably companies that have already invested in it and it will take them a few years to get rid of it, but it won't stay much longer than that IMHO. Only advantage I see now is that you can get mineral oil openly, but fluids for passive (at this moment) only from 3M.
How is 2-phase immersion cooling different from oil cooling?
2-phase immersion cooling does a much better job at cooling electronics, at much lower cost with less resources. Because of the physical limitations of oil and cooling, high density as in 2-phase immersion would simply not be possible.
Oil cooling is a single phase process. Oil cooling systems are not passive, it requires hydraulic pumps to take hot oil away from hot spots because oil is a fluid with high viscosity. Passive 2-phase immersion cooling uses fluids with a very low viscosity just like water. This means the liquid circulates passively, taking the heat away efficiently without any pumps. Oil needs filtration and treatment and has a limited lifespan when used for electronics cooling.
The engineered fluids in a passive immersion system are inert, have a shelf life of 30 years and show no degradation after long term use for cooling. While the fluid is not particularly hot (ie. 34°C or 49°C when it boils), the constant boiling and condensation is a distillation process on its own. It's also very clean (not oily or greasy), has zero ozone depletion, very low global warming potential, and it is the best fire protection one can imagine (Novec 1230 is state-of-the-art data center fire protection).
Using large amounts of oil in a data center brings non-technical implications since oil is classified as dangerous and flammable. Government regulations, fire safety standards and insurance risks all require careful considerations.
Oil cooling can reduce electricity bills and the burden on the environment. However, in an oil cooling application fans and air filters are replaced with hydraulic pumps and oil filters, while passive 2-phase immersion cooling simply eliminates these resource hogs altogether.
Technically and physically, passive 2-phase immersion cooling is way ahead, and practically we believe the same is also true.
http://www.allied-control.com/immersion-cooling/frequently-asked-questions-faqs
but it hanged at 0.23. But back to speculation. You guys think it will reach 3.0 btc again next year with high devidends? I don't got a lot off stocks But I went in with 2.5 btc for long term dividends. So In a few years I can maybe gather all the btc again.
, FC has never mentioned 28nm
