IBM and ETH Zurich unveil plan to build new kind of water-cooled supercomputer
Schematic showing the innovative water-cooling system of Aquasar. The fist-of-a-kind supercomputer with direct energy reuse build by IBM and ETH Zurich is planned to go into operation in 2010 and is expected cut energy consumption by as much as 40% and carbon-dioxide emissions by up to 85%.
In an effort to achieve energy-aware computing, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), and IBM today announced plans to build a first-of-a-kind water-cooled supercomputer that will directly repurpose excess heat for the university buildings. The innovative system, dubbed Aquasar, is expected to decrease the carbon footprint of the system by up to 85% and estimated to save up to 30 tons of CO2 per year, compared to a similar system using today’s cooling technologies.