Submersive cooling reconsidered for high-density computing

Green Revolution Cooling, which develops fluid submersion cooling system for high-performance servers, has just finished the largest installation of its technology in Houston.

The customer is CGGVeritas, which uses 1U dual-GPU SuperServers from Super Micro Computer to run data-intensive geophysical applications, such as seismic survey analysis. Each of the racks at CGGVeritas contains 40 servers, with 41K GPU cores. According to Green Cooling Revolution, the installation has helped reduce the power used in the data center by 40 percent.

OK, so submersion as an approach to cooling isn't exactly new: Cray used the approach extensively in the 1970s and 1980s. What is different about Green Revolution Cooling's approach is that it focuses on placing densely packed servers in a circulating bath of liquid mineral oil, rather than relying on air cooling as the cooling agent for a data center.

Green Revolution Cooling's technology is called CarnoJet. It uses GreenDef Dielectric coolant to help reduce overall energy consumption for high-performance computing installations. The CGGVeritas system uses a 24-rack 600-kilowatt CarnotJet system.

The video below from the Texas Advanced Computing Center, featuring Green Revolution Cooling's co-founder, walks through how the technology works:

In mid-April, Green Revolution Cooling snagged a Small Business Innovation Research program award to work on improvements for its CarnotJet technology. Among other things, the company plans to produce a new 55U capacity configuration that will allow data centers to cool 30 percent more servers per rack.