SGI^® Altix^® : Engineered to Save Energy

The Inside Story on SGI's Newest Green Servers

SGI Altix ICE servers couldn't be more aptly named. Designed to optimize power and cooling efficiency in the data center, they feature a variety of energy-saving innovations, including SGI's new third-generation water-cooled door design.

The SGI Altix ICE platform is the newest in the SGI Altix server line, which has consistently ranked among the industry's most energy-efficient server systems that minimize environmental impact. SGI Altix servers enable greener data center environments for SGI customers-and save customers money on power and cooling costs in the process.

Addressing Today's Data-Center Cooling Crisis

To understand why it's become so critical to engineer servers for maximum efficiency, a little history is in order. According to SGI Chief Engineer Tim McCann, since the time when many of today's legacy data centers were built, the amount of heat dissipated in the data center from some server racks has increased by an order of magnitude from two or three kilowatts to 30 or more.

"You have millions of square feet of space out there designed for systems that are now obsolete," explains McCann, "and the systems that have taken their place can dissipate enough heat to severely strain the data center's air-conditioning capacity."

The answer is not to simply keep increasing cooling capacity, which may not only be cost-prohibitive, but would also dramatically increase energy usage at a time when companies are increasingly committed to operating "green" technology environments. Rather, it's to decrease the heat dissipation. That's what SGI Altix servers have always done — and they're doing it better than ever with the introduction of the SGI Altix ICE platform.

Reducing Energy Demands with SGI Altix ICE Cooling

SGI Altix ICE servers offer the option to augment high efficiency redundant blowers with water-cooled rear doors that dissipate server rack heat to chilled water, rather than out into the data center. The chilled water carries away up to 95 percent of the heat generated by the server, virtually eliminating the effect of server heat on the ambient temperature of the data center.

"We're able to return air to the data center that's nearly the same temperature as the air that went into the server racks," notes McCann, "and we're able to do it using water, rather than less environment-friendly coolants within the racks".

The result is a lower energy footprint in the data center and lower electricity costs, which can drop by 17 percent or more with the use of the water-cooled option. Not only that, keeping the data center cooler can also lead to longer server life and more reliable operations, by eliminating the "hot spots" that can be associated with equipment failures.

The SGI Altix ICE platform also uses high-efficiency redundant blowers in a thermal design that cools more consistently and efficiently than many other blade-based designs. The SGI design enables a large volume of air to flow directly through the compute blades rather than through a series of baffles and airflow management structures. This enables the server to provide the required airflow while consuming less energy than it would be able to otherwise.

Using Power-Supply Innovations to Increase Energy Efficiency

Cooling is one-half of the SGI Altix ICE equation for more energy-conscious data center operations. The other is an energy-smart power architecture that realizes more than 90 percent efficiency on the front-end power supply. These high-efficiency, redundant power supplies transform AC voltage directly to 12VDC. They work with other high-efficiency system components to minimize the power conversion losses systemwide.

A 90 percent power efficiency is a significant improvement over many systems, which use power supplies that are 60 to 70 percent efficient, according to Ecos Consulting. SGI calculates that the high level of efficiency delivered by SGI Altix ICE results in an average electrical savings of 33%, compared to typical cluster implementations. In terms of cost savings, that amounts to $21,000 a year per 10 teraflops of compute power. The savings can increase substantially when one considers the additional costs associated with operation the data center facilities power and cooling infrastructure.

Beyond the power architecture, SGI Altix ICE servers incorporate an ultra-dense rack architecture that delivers up to 40 percent more performance per floor tile than other blade-based rack architectures. A single SGI Altix ICE rack can have up to 512 Intel Xeon processors in it, enabling exceptionally small physical and environmental footprints and lower energy costs.

Building on a History of Commitment to the Environment

While the SGI Altix ICE platform may boast some new energy-saving features, there's nothing new about SGI's commitment to environmental awareness and preservation. Incorporating technology for reducing energy usage is just one of a number of ongoing environmental initiatives in which SGI has been engaged since the company was founded in 1982. Others include operating the entire business in an environmentally sound manner and working with suppliers to help ensure that they, too, comply with SGI's policies for environmental responsibility.

In addition, SGI is a member of a number of industry organizations devoted to promoting energy efficiency and environmental responsibility. These organizations include The Green Grid (sm), a consortium of IT companies seeking to lower the overall consumption of power in data centers, and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a nonprofit group of eco-conscious consumers, businesses, and conservation organizations.

SGI Chief Engineer McCann belongs to the American Society of Heating and Refrigerating Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE), a professional organization and is a voting member of Technical Committee 9.9 "Mission Critical Facilities, Technology Spaces and Electronic Equipment". The committee is devoted to being recognized by the datacom industry as the unbiased engineering leader in HVAC and an effective provider of technical information.

"For years, deploying 'green' servers has mostly been only a side benefit when customers invest in our high-performance systems. Few customers, then, made purchases based solely on a server's environmental advantages," according to SGI Chief Technology Officer Dr. Eng Lim Goh. "However, this is changing. At SGI, we recognized all along that a more efficient system costs less to operate and maintain—a benefit that thousands of SGI Altix customers realize increasingly every year as the cost of electricity soars."

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Related SGI press release: SGI Strengthens Environmental Commitment By Joining Climate Savers Computing Initiative.