Startup focuses on reliable, efficient cooling for computer servers In a dark, windy room on the top floor of Engineering Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, racks of computers are processing information for a college that relies, like all technical fields, on massive computing power. The noise comes from multiple fans located inside each computer case and from the large air conditioner that drives currents through the room to remove waste heat from the processors. Equipment and electricity for cooling are a major expense at big computer installations, and Timothy Shedd, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at UW-Madison, uses the room to show a system he has invented that can do the job more efficiently. In Shedds system, a pair of translucent plastic tubes enter each computer case. Upon close inspection, a stream of tiny bubbles in the fluid can be seen exiting the case. Those bubbles—a gas phase of the liquid refrigerant that entered the computer—are removing heat from a single computer. For several reasons, the system is, roughly speaking, 10 times more efficient than the air-conditioning that dominates the server field. Shedd has spent more than a decade studying and designing computer cooling systems, and he has started a spinoff business called Ebullient to commercialize his invention, which is covered by patents hes assigned to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Computing power degrades and then fails if chips get too hot, so cooling is a fundamental need in data centers—the warehouses full of racks of computers owned by Amazon, Google and lesser-known firms. Data centers are growing seven to 10 percent a year in the U.S., with the biggest growth in the Midwest, Shedd says. Read more at: phys.org/news/2014-03-startup-focuses-reliable-efficient-cooling.html#jCp
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 12:15:50 +0000