Collaboration enables new ways of achieving high compute density and
deploying data centers in locations where energy and real estate come at
a premium
DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
3M announced today it has collaborated with Orange Silicon Valley, the
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and Allied Control to demonstrate
high-density, high-efficiency graphics processing unit (GPU) computing.
The high-density server – operating in an Allied Control two-phase
immersion cooling system – is on display in 3M booth #2081 at
Supercomputing 2017.
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Drastic space reduction allows single width or denser GPU installation. (Photo: Allied Control)
The 20 GPU server, specially-configured and donated by Orange Silicon
Valley, is packaged in a compact, three rack unit form factor. Each GPU
has an original thermal design power (TDP) of 235 watts and potentially
more with overclocking. Operation of such a high-density configuration
is made possible by the unique properties of 3M’s immersion cooling
fluid. The fluid is more efficient at removing heat, enabling an
increase in hardware density and higher processor utilization – creating
a more efficient and greener data center. The server is cooled using 3M™
Fluorinert™ Electronic Liquid FC-72 in a two-phase immersion cooling
system designed by Allied Control, yielding optimal compute performance
with an ultralow 1.01 power usage effectiveness (PUE).
“Our extremely dense, two-phase immersion cooling systems not only
enable high-performance computing (HPC) applications and hyperscalers to
realize enormous cost-savings, but can also radically redefine the
capability of usually very limited edge data centers,” said Kar-Wing
Lau, CEO of Allied Control. “A broad range of applications could be
supported, such as artificial intelligence augmented medical imaging and
networks of rooftop edge data centers in dense urban centers to help
improve self-driving cars.”
Orange Silicon Valley provided and overclocked the GPUs, utilizing this
optimized performance to experiment with power-hungry cryptocurrency
software Zcash, whose Equihash proof-of-work algorithm pushes the GPU
cores to maximum utilization, taking up all the power headroom. The U.S.
Naval Research team demonstrated MAGMA, DGEMM benchmarks to maximize the
performance of the GPUs to utilize all the power headroom available.
The server platform supports 20 GPUs in a single, PCIe root complex and
can be used for deep learning, traditional HPC workloads, and
cryptocurrency mining during idle time. Two-phase liquid immersion
cooling allows all the GPU SoC to be under 55 degrees Celsius at 100
percent GPU utilization at 120 percent TDP.
“With liquid immersion cooling, we can significantly increase the
computation density of infrastructure for heavy duty HPC applications.
Thermal engineering becomes increasingly difficult with air-cooled
systems as we pack more GPUs in a smaller space. With a lower PUE and
smaller physical footprint, we can envision new ways of designing our
future data centers in regions where both energy and real estate come at
a premium cost,” says Jérome Laudouar, vice president of infrastructure
for Orange SA.
Orange Silicon Valley is a business innovation subsidiary of global
telecommunications operator, Orange SA.
Allied Control is a high-tech company, building world-leading, two-phase
immersion cooling solutions for high-density electronics, and a
Technology Collaborator for 3M Immersion Cooling.
3M and Fluorinert are trademarks of 3M Company.
About 3M
At 3M, we apply science in collaborative ways to
improve lives daily. With $30 billion in sales, our 90,000 employees
connect with customers all around the world. Learn more about 3M’s
creative solutions to the world’s problems at www.3M.com
or on Twitter @3M or @3MNews.
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Source: 3M