RSC announces unique liquid-cooled energy-efficient HPC platform based on widely available motherboards for Intel processors

RSC has delivered the world first implementation of complete liquid-cooled High Performance Computing platform based on all widely available server components and leading Intel Xeon processors. Multiple product solutions based on the next generation Intel processors (codenamed Sandy Bridge) and accelerators are going to be available in the future.

Hamburg, International Supercomputing Conference, 20th June, 2011. - RSC (booth #840) has demonstrated its new innovative high-performance computing platform during the leading supercomputing event - International Supercomputing Conference 2011 in Hamburg, Germany on June 20-23. The unique design is based on the widely available server boards with Intel processors and features liquid cooling for all heat-emitting electronic components. This is RSC's second generation of energy efficient supercomputing infrastructure designs, enabling use of wide range of the motherboards initially designed for traditional forced air-flow cooling.

The use of widely available components, high energy efficiency and flexibility of infrastructure gives the opportunity to employ demonstrated  products not only in the high-performance computing environment, but also adapt it for building cloud computing infrastructure, e.g. creating private clouds for the customers.

The novel RSC solution supports widely available server motherboards for the Intel® Xeon® 5600 series processors from several manufacturers. In addition, solutions based on the next generation Intel processors (codenamed Sandy Bridge) and accelerators with PCI Express interface are going to be available in the future.

«To facilitate harnessing our technology, RSC announces commercial availability of an end-user product consisting of compute cluster module of 15 TFLOPS peak performance and based on Intel processors, with the both Infiniband and Ethernet interconnects, storage, power supply and cooling systems integrated along with the HPC optimized software stack. This integrated cluster solution is ready for delivery to the customers. The performance will rise up to 30 TFLOPS with availability of the next generation Intel server processors, as well as there is an option to extend the system further by including co-processors using the same infrastructure», - said Alexey Shmelev, Chief Operations Officer at RSC.

«RSC is ready to implement similar energy efficient product designs for the motherboards from any OEM/ODM vendors, which were initially designed for forced airflow cooling. RSC innovative cooling design has already been implemented for server boards from different ODM companies», - explained Egor Druzhinin, Chief Technology Officer at RSC.

«In 2010 Intel selected RSC as the the winner in the category 'The best server design based on Intel Xeon processors in Russia/CIS region' for delivering an innovative energy efficient platform for high-performance computing. We are excited that RSC has continued to innovate with, and invest in Intel's Xeon processor family by bringing out the 2nd generation of their energy efficient solution for HPC and cloud computing», said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Center Group. «By combining RSC innovative design and Intel Xeon processor performance and capabilities, the new RSC solution demonstrates leading edge platform technology breakthroughs to deploy sustainable and environmental friendly data centers.»

At ISC'11 exhibit RSC presents innovative concept of energy efficient datacenters with advanced liquid cooling of general-purpose COTS (commodity off the shelf) components. RSC demonstrated the basic building block of the new HPC cluster design based on 6-core Intel® Xeon® X5680 processors running at 3.33 GHz with liquid cooling for all electronic components on the compute board. This block is the key element in implementation of flexible, energy efficient datacenter infrastructure. These advanced HPC system design and flexible infrastructure are already deployed in the RSC's largest project at South Ural State University (Chelyabinsk, Russia), where 117 TFLOPS supercomputer has been built. Several other projects being worked on with several RSC's customers.

Technical details and unique features:

• available for wide choice of widely available server boards with one, two, four and more processors;
• servers based on industry-standard architecture Intel® Xeon® server processors with power dissipation as high as 130W and even more;
• selection from wide range of DDR3 memory modules available on the market with various capacity and performance: all liquid-cooled with RSC's patent pending technology;
• use of standard hard drives as well as solid state disks (SSD);
• interconnection using both Infiniband and 10 Gigabit Ethernet technologies;
• additional performance boost by including accelerators with PCI Express interface;
• option to harness «hot water» cooling for all electronic components, with liquid temperature as high as  55o C for the heat transport;
• high efficiency of energy and datacenter space usage: even for small datacenter average achievable PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) is below 1.2 with compute power density more than 25 TFLOPS/sq.m, including internal pumps, heat exchanges and power supplies;
• additional operating cost reduction provided when using in combination with «free cooling».

About RSC

RSC is Russia's and CIS leading developer and integrator of next-generation supercomputing solutions based on Intel architecture and technology, advanced liquid cooling and its own extensive know-how. The company's potential allows for practical realization of industry-highest computing density based on x86 standard processors, completely green design, 100 percent compatibility and guaranteed scalability, while ensuring lowest total cost of ownership and small energy consumption.

RSC supercomputing solution was recognized a winner of Russia's and CIS "Best Server Solution Based on Intel® Xeon® Processors" nomination in a contest organized by Intel Corporation in 2010.  RSC has the Platinum status in Intel® Technology Provider Program. 100 percent compatibility and guaranteed scalability of RSC solutions is acknowledged by Intel® Cluster Ready certificate. For more information please visit www.rscgroup.ru.

About Intel

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world's computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available at newsroom.intel.com and blogs.intel.com.