A sustainable life cycle for High Performance Computing

Last week, the CooLMUC-3 supercomputer at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Garching was dismantled. The system, consisting of nine server racks, supported the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Technical University of Munich, and other Bavarian universities with computing power for many years.

Equipped with ColdCon®, the liquid cooling technology developed by MEGWARE, the compute nodes, memory modules, network interfaces, power supplies, and all Intel® Omni-Path switches were cooled directly with hot water.
At the time of its installation, it was the world’s first HPC system with almost 100% direct hot-water cooling. Its fanless design enabled up to 97% of the generated heat to be transferred into the water circuit while operating almost silently.

CooLMUC-3 was a pilot system for future system cooling concepts in High Performance Computing.

However, HPC does not end with the installation of a system.

In addition to planning and installing numerous supercomputers, MEGWARE also supports the decommissioning, dismantling, and professional disposal of existing HPC systems. In data centers where new generations of supercomputers are regularly deployed, a structured, safe, and sustainable dismantling process is essential.

Our team ensures that the end of a system’s life cycle is handled just as professionally as its installation—from technical dismantling and reuse of suitable components to environmentally responsible disposal.

This is how we support data centers not only in building powerful HPC infrastructures, but throughout the entire system life cycle.