Computer farms are becoming increasingly widespread. They generate large amounts of heat in very small volumes. As processor technologies evolve, stable chip operating temperatures have risen dramatically.
When we set up our High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster, we opted for “Free Cooling”, i.e. using filtered outside air to cool the physical infrastructure.
The principle of “free cooling” relies on the use of outside air to thermoregulate the room housing the IT infrastructure. The outside air, which is cooler than the temperature of the servers, is filtered and then circulated to cool the equipment.
OptiFluides’ objective here was to determine the thermal power to be evacuated, design the air circuit (choice of filters, fans, design of the thermal control PLC), and simulate and validate operation under different weather conditions (summer/winter).
