> Or perhaps some non-conductive
working fluid instead of water.
> That might not carry quite as much
heat as water, but it would surely
> carry more than air and if chosen
correctly would have more benign results
> when the inevitable leaks and
spills occur.
HCFC-123 is likely what would be used, which means that you
would want to limit the amount of time that you spend inside the data
center because, with the large number of connections in the facility, leaks
will be inevitable and inhaling the gas causes liver
damage.
Essentially, you are saying that we should get rid of
chillers and turn the entire data center into a giant chiller. Instead of
being a building with rooms and equipment, the data center becomes a machine and
humans only venture inside when the machine is shut down for
maintenance.
> Less practical but more fun to
contemplate would be data centers pressurized
> with a working gas that offers
better heat transfer than oxygen/nitrogen and no
> oxidation potential.
Airlocks and suits for the techs, but no fire worries ever.
> Heck, just close the room and
inject liquid nitrogen under the raised floor to be
> scavenged overhead and
re-compressed, chilled, liquefied and sent round again.
> Reserve cooling for power outages
is just huge dewars full of liquid nitrogen :)
> Not
so serious today,
Why not? If you take your pressurized liquid nitrogen
scenario and turn it inside out, then it might well be workable and there
would be no need for suits. For instance, imagine a cylinder
containing the liquid nitro cooling (liquid air might be cheaper) with
devices attached all around like the petals on a flower. Each device
has heat exchangers for cooling the hottest parts (CPUs) and the heat
exchangers are attached to the cooling cylinder. With continued increase in
density of cores, this could be feasible. In essence it would be a kind of blade
server with the cooling and backplane in a central cylinder. Added benefits
might come from supercooling the backplane.
Consider what is happening beyond the consumer dual
and 8-core (PS3) machines.
--Michael Dillon