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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (21671)	5/29/2007 4:39:34 AM
From: axial	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Incoming air must be filtered, dehumidified, and cooled. One of the most disappointing aspects of the problem is that the heat energy in exhaust air is just "dumped" by conventional HVAC: wasted. I agree with the comment that the future probably lies in variations on liquid cooling. A possible benefit of liquid cooling is that heat energy can be more easily collected and re-used, perhaps to drive mechanical components in the cooling system or in some other ways. With some redesign, using expansion of a circulating low-pressure chassis refrigerant could perhaps achieve greater efficiencies. Not only in cooling, either. As every overclocker knows, lowering the temperature at which silicon operates can result in improved processor performance. Silicon power-management techniques such as clock gating and power gating, now being applied to mobile processors could be adapted. Dynamic allocation of processing (ie., only powering up as much system processing as you need) could help. Smaller circuits (we're heading into nano territory) will also help. Solid-state memory is approaching cost-effective usability, and looks like it will offer significant gains in efficiency and speed. There's no single Killer Solution, but after engineers find metrics for data center efficiency, they'll probably begin to think in terms of closed-system solutions, each designed to be part of an integrated concept. Quantum computing still lies ahead of us, and will theoretically improve processing efficiencies by several orders of magnitude. But increased processing demand will probably extinguish the gains, over time, and everything I've read so far suggests that such computers will need supercooling, at least at the processing core. Speaking of which, a primitive form of quantum computer has been operating in Vancouver lately, though some question whether it is, in fact, a "quantum computer". It performs only a limited type of processing, but does not lack for customers. backbonemag.com cbc.ca Jim

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (21671)	5/31/2007 4:41:30 AM
From: axial	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Researchers create new nanotechnology field physorg.com We've only just begun to scratch the surface of this field, but we believe we have the physics sorted out and one day this technology will be used to develop very fast, very small electronics that have a very low power consumption," said Elezzabi, the Canada Research Chair in Ultrafast Photonics and Nano-Optics and an electrical and computer engineering professor at the U of A. Elezzabi's work addresses a number of challenges that, to this point, have hindered further advancement in computer electronics, such as in the creation of smaller devices. One such challenge is that as traditional, silicon-based semiconductor devices approach the nanoscale, the laws of quantum physics take control over their performance (specifically the flow of charges—i.e. electrons) and render them inoperable. Researchers in the field of spintronics have tried to address this problem by building metal-based devices that harness the magnetic quantum properties of the spin of electrons. Although the spintronics field is barely a dozen years-old, some devices that incorporate spintronics technology are already on the market. The field of plasmonics, which is even younger than spintronics, involves the transfer of light electromagnetic energy into a tiny volume, thus creating intense electric fields—a phenomenon that has many scientists rethinking the laws of electromagnetics on a nanoscale. The plasmonics field has many wide-ranging applications, from guiding light through metal wires, to bio-sensing, to making objects invisible to the eye. One of the main challenges for plasmonics researchers is finding a way to propagate light over a long distance through solid materials. However, Elezzabi and his colleagues, U of A graduate student Kenneth Chau and Dr. Mark Johnson of the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory, have successfully combined plasmonics and spintronics in a way that puts plasmonics in a new light, and puts a new spin on spintronics. Working with gold and cobalt samples, Elezzabi and his team were able to demonstrate a plasmonically-activated spintronic device that switches light on and off by controlling electron spins. Also, they believe that with a slight alteration of the sample structure the effect is non-volatile, meaning that any given result can be maintained indefinitely without the necessity of a power source. "With the development of this technology I envision a move from semiconductors [silicon chips] to metal based electronics with light-driven circuits," Elezzabi said."

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (21671)	6/4/2007 7:02:52 PM
From: axial	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

"One of the most disappointing aspects of the problem is that the heat energy in exhaust air is just "dumped" by conventional HVAC: wasted." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ physorg.com "University of Utah physicists developed small devices that turn heat into sound and then into electricity. The technology holds promise for changing waste heat into electricity, harnessing solar energy and cooling computers and radars. "We are converting waste heat to electricity in an efficient, simple way by using sound," says Orest Symko, a University of Utah physics professor who leads the effort. "It is a new source of renewable energy from waste heat." Five of Symko’s doctoral students recently devised methods to improve the efficiency of acoustic heat-engine devices to turn heat into electricity. They will present their findings on Friday, June 8 during the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center hotel. Symko plans to test the devices within a year to produce electricity from waste heat at a military radar facility and at the university’s hot-water-generating plant."

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (21671)	6/7/2007 9:47:13 PM
From: axial	Respond to of 46821

Low-energy server hosting goes underground Smartbunker digs deep for zero-carbon data centre By Bryan Betts ? More by this author Published Thursday 7th June 2007 11:00 GMT Centrinet is claiming zero-carbon energy emissions and military-grade security for its Smartbunker underground managed hosting service. Built in what was a NATO command centre, 100 metres below the wilds of Lincolnshire, England, Smartbunker runs on wind and water-power and uses power-efficient kit such as IBM bladeservers - there's none of that dodgy carbon-offset going on here, or so the company claims. The power - from renewable energy supplier Ecotricity - carries a "double-digit percentage price premium", said Smartbunker MD Kelly Smith, but he claimed that the company's been able to compensate for that through efficient data centre design. "One of the big advantages we have is we've built this from scratch," he said. That means the data centre's got the power and cooling to run high-density gear - in particular, he says that the bladeservers running the hosting service are 60 percent more power-efficient than equivalent 1U servers, because they share otherwise-wasteful components such as power supplies. "With 1U servers we could get 42 processors in a rack, but that would take 18kW, versus 5kW or 6kW for 42 processors in blade servers," he claimed. "And of course, efficient servers mean less cooling cost." He added, "The environmental aspect is only one of three things we need to have, though. It's nice to have, but we still have to provide good service and support - we're providing a mid-market service on resilient bladeservers, not an entry-level one on pizza-boxes - and we have to have the security side." The latter comes courtesy of NATO and the MoD - the 30,000 sq.ft (10,000 sq.m) bunker was originally built (dug?) as a radar station and then refitted in the 1980s for NATO use. So not only does it have great views over the Lincolnshire coast at surface level, but all the comms ducting was already in place below ground when Centrinet bought it in 2003. "It was all copper though," Smith said. "The biggest investment in this came from BT, which had to dig up 11km of road to get the fibre in. Now we have a triple high-resilience network, with dual SDH rings. "We started up Centrinet to do remote management of data centres from our NOC in Lincoln, but it was also a mission of ours to have our own data centre," he continued. He said that, while they were aware of ex-military bunkers coming onto the market, it was just good luck that one came up for sale in the same county - even if it did take three years and several £100,000s to refurbish. Smith claimed that the whole of Centrinet now has a zero-carbon footprint, including its NOC and its co-location facility which also lives in the bunker, and has been running there since last year. "There's a lot of 'greenwash' about," he said, "but frankly, if you're building a data centre today you have to take energy into account - you'd be mad not to. Energy is becoming the biggest operational cost in data centres. "Companies realise they have to do something, but not all have the opportunity or luxury we had to start from scratch. And when it comes down to it, the environment is important not just because you think it is, but because your customers think it is." theregister.co.uk

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (21671)	6/26/2013 12:37:40 PM
From: axial	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 46821

New Tech Keeps Data Centers Cool in Warm Climates Hot water from some computers drives the refrigeration of others ' ... the Regensburg system uses the heat to power an adsorption chiller and provide them—or other computers in the data center—with extra frostiness. iDataCool’s key innovation of iDataCool is its low-cost, custom-designed copper heat sink, through which the water flows, drawing away heat. The processor heat sink is hard-soldered to a copper pipeline with flowing water, which is attached to heat sinks affixed to other components in the system, such as memory and voltage controllers. The energy from all this hot water goes to drive the adsorption chiller, which operates efficiently when the water entering is above 65°C. The chiller produces cold water that feeds a separate cooling loop in the data center. External coolers that would be attached to this loop in other setups could thus be completely replaced by the adsorption chiller. Though the adsorption chiller works best at temperatures above 65°C, the processors themselves consume less power at lower temperatures. So in operation, the processors consumed 5 percent more power than is ideal. However, that extra wattage was more than offset by the 90 percent improvement in the adsorption chiller’s efficiency. With the system in place, the energy recovered from iDataCool was about 25 percent of what would have been lost. Auweter has seen the iDataCool firsthand and thinks it is a well-conceived system. “To be honest, I think...they’re actually really addressing all the important issues of higher-temperature cooling,” he says. Wettig says the team did not encounter any major problems after installing the system, but he did admit there was one flaw that could be fixed. “We lose a lot of heat to the air of the computing center” because the server racks are poorly insulated, he says. According to the researchers’ projections, with better thermal insulation about 50 percent of the total waste energy could be recovered. Hot-water cooling and energy reuse is still considered a novel solution for high-performance computers, but Auweter genuinely believes that this is the best option out there, especially for supercomputers installed in warmer climes. The biggest deterrent against adoption, he says, is the fear of having to put up a little more money for a system that still isn’t widely used. “When it comes to spending lots of money, people tend to get very conservative and stick to proven technologies. In our case, that would mean they stick to air cooling,” says Auweter. “But I think it’s just crucial to have reference to setups of systems like iDataCool, so those people can think beyond the current state of the art or just to demonstrate that the risk is not actually as high as they might think.” ' spectrum.ieee.org Jim