News Intel Working on New Cooling for Chips up to 2000W

[rtoaht]

It seems most people in the comments assumed this is aimed for consumer chips. Either the article didn't communicate the news properly or this is not the right forum to publish server technology related news. Otherwise, it might mislead people into thinking something that is untrue.

 

[Ravestein NL]

Indeed. Going forward are we really going to need 30+amp outlets to run our freaking PCs?

If there's a practical limit to how much power a chip can draw (and how much heat it produces), Intel appears determined to find it.

Or you could up the voltage to European standards 240VAC, then you needn't bigger cabling!

 

[truerock]

Since the recommended max for a US household outlet is 1500W, I guess your next Intel PC will go in the garage next to the tumble dryer.

Exactly what my first thought was.

I'm in worse shape than that. My study (where my desktop PC is located) is wired with just one 15amp/120v circuit. That powers 4 ceiling lights, also. What was I thinking when I built this house!?

If I built a house (in the US) today, every outlet would be wired 20amp or 40amp and I would have a dedicated circuit for my desktop PC. And, of course I'd have two 4,800 watt outlets in the garage for charging electric cars.

I had an apartment above my garage re-built about 4 years ago. We put an electric water heater in it that used four 40 amp circuits... 19,200 watts!! The only reason we were able to do that was because the garage apartment was built on top of where the mains-electric entered the property. I'd like to replace my 15-year-old gas-fired water heater in the main house with an electric water heater - but, there is no way to get four 40 amp circuits to that part of the house.

 

[bit_user]

Single CPU, correct with the exception of certain entire wafer chips.

Those are even more exotic than the mainframe CPUs I made an exception for.

However edzieba said devices. So 4+ CPU, raid of SSD / M.2 / U.3 drives , GPU/Compute cards, multiple 100gb+ networking cards / connections, 1TB+ of Ram and the cooling to cool all that (plus any other add-in cards for specialty purposes) you can easily get over 2kW per 2-4U server (aka a single device).

I never debated that point. I just said he's confusing machine power with CPU power. The article is talking about 2kW CPUs! Yet his post was ridiculing everybody in this thread for thinking this was a new development, but it is!

As for servers burning > 2kW, it's mostly the GPUs which push it over the line. Otherwise, it's things like blade servers that could get into that range.

Intel also said "devices" rather than chips in their press release

Given we've had > 2 kW servers for a while now, it's clear that they weren't talking about that kind of device. They probably were just speaking inclusively of CPUs and GPUs, without getting bogged down in the distinctions.

 

[bit_user]

Software licensing is based on what the customer is willing to pay for the service. For Engineering software it is often based on the number of users and their location.

For databases, it does tend to be tied to CPUs/cores, from what I've heard.

This is one reason the company I worked for moved it's engineering work to The Philippines and PC motherboard design to Taiwan.

: (

 

[bit_user]

An alternative solution to data centre cooling, here in the UK. Only small scale so far.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64939558

Extrapolating current trends, we're on track to boil the oceans, by the end of the century.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Software licensing is based on what the customer is willing to pay for the service. For Engineering software it is often based on the number of users and their location. For example, it costs $20,000/user/yr for a user in the United States or Europe and is $2000/yr for a user in China, Taiwan, Malaysia or The Philippines. This is one reason the company I worked for moved it's engineering work to The Philippines and PC motherboard design to Taiwan.

That sounds real scammy to have such a difference in pricing based on region.

 

[TerryLaze]

That sounds real scammy to have such a difference in pricing based on region.

But it's not. At least you can't say that that easily.

 

[edzieba]

I never debated that point. I just said he's confusing machine power with CPU power. The article is talking about 2kW CPUs! Yet his post was ridiculing everybody in this thread for thinking this was a new development, but it is!

Because the article talking about 2kW CPUs is simply incorrect, and misread the Intel press-release.
People railing about something that has not actually happened deserve ridicule, at the very least for failing to check the original source despite being linked directly. All outrage over imagined occurrences can and should be taken to task as a matter of principle.

 

[bit_user]

Because the article talking about 2kW CPUs is simply incorrect, and misread the Intel press-release.

I can understand you're embarrassed to be corrected, when you were trying to be the one doing the correcting. Try thinking about this logically, if you can.

From the Intel source:

"Intel researchers are developing novel solutions to support the power and thermal management needs of next-generation architectures, including devices up to 2 kilowatts."
​

As you already stated, 2 kW servers are nothing new. And they said up to 2 kW! If they were talking about servers, then they wouldn't only be concerned about next-generation architectures and they wouldn't stop at 2 kW. It's obvious that what they meant by "devices" is something like a CPU or GPU package or perhaps even a module, like Nvidia's SXM cards or OCP's OAM cards.

 

[edzieba]

I can understand you're embarrassed to be corrected, when you were trying to be the one doing the correcting. Try thinking about this logically, if you can.

From the Intel source:

"Intel researchers are developing novel solutions to support the power and thermal management needs of next-generation architectures, including devices up to 2 kilowatts."
​

As you already stated, 2 kW servers are nothing new. And they said up to 2 kW! If they were talking about servers, then they wouldn't only be concerned about next-generation architectures and they wouldn't stop at 2 kW. It's obvious that what they meant by "devices" is something like a CPU or GPU package or perhaps even a module, like Nvidia's SXM cards or OCP's OAM cards.

Or that they are targeting density and disaggregated devices (e.g. split your 6U DGX into several discrete networked 1U or blade devices) rather than monolithic devices. Monoliths are already well served by immersion cooling, targeted cooling is better suited to disaggregation.