Installing a hot water-cooled HPC Cluster at the University of Greifswald

For MEGWARE, which is one of the leading European specialists with 25 years of tradition in the development and production of highly efficient HPC systems, this task was nevertheless a special challenge. Besides downstream use of the thermal energy, the new high-performance computer was also required to deliver maximum computing power with the lowest possible packing density. It was precisely for this purpose that MEGWARE developed the new compute platform SlideSX®-LC, which it successfully integrated within the datacentre.

Every compute node in SlideSX®-LC is equipped with an Intel server mainboard carrying two processors of the latest Intel Xeon ‘Haswell’ generation. Liquid-cooled elements directly in the nodes transfer waste heat immediately to the water circuit. Here, operation with high cooling water temperatures enables downstream use of the energy to support the heating system.

Dr Gordon Grubert, Technical Director at the University of Greifswald, emphasises the significance of the MEGWARE system: “A neutral carbon footprint occupies a key role in our university’s IT concept. Sustainable climate protection is not possible without energy efficiency. This is why we found the well-conceived green IT solution by MEGWARE Computer GmbH so convincing. Its system configuration is ideally suited to our demand for energy efficiency and optimised performance, and is tailored perfectly to acquire additional operational experience that will flow into the ongoing plans for our new build.”

This is already MEGWARE’s second reference project in the area of ‘hot water cooling directly on the chip’. Back in 2011, the company installed the world famous ‘CooLMUC’ at the Leibniz datacentre in Garching; there, the energy is converted into adsorption refrigeration for downstream use.

“The installation at the Greifswald datacentre allowed us to achieve a successful turn of invest, which involved implementing the many years of research and development work we put into our new HPC platform for hot water cooling within the framework of a customer contract. Here, MEGWARE has proven that as an innovative technology developer, it recognises and executes the needs of the market, and hence is quite rightly among the leading companies in the industry”, says Jörg Heydemüller, MEGWARE HPC representative.