IDataCool
| Company type | Research project |
|---|---|
| Industry | High-performance computing, Data center cooling |
| Founded | 2011 |
| Headquarters | Regensburg , Germany |
Key people | Physics department, University of Regensburg; IBM Research and Development Laboratory Böblingen; InvenSor |
| Products | High-performance computer cluster with hot-water cooling and energy reuse system |
| Owner | University of Regensburg, IBM, InvenSor |
iDataCool represents a high-performance computer cluster built upon a customized IBM System x iDataPlex platform. It functions as an experimental setup aimed at investigating hot-water cooling techniques for IT hardware and optimizing the reuse of waste heat. The initiative is spearheaded by the physics department at the University of Regensburg, in partnership with IBM’s Research and Development Laboratory in Böblingen and InvenSor, receiving financial support from the German Research Foundation (DFG), Bavaria, and IBM.
Overview
The primary focus of iDataCool lies in implementing hot-water cooling systems alongside energy reuse strategies within data centers. The cluster's waste heat drives an adsorption chiller, which produces chilled water. Key objectives of the project include:
- Validating production-level computer cluster cooling at temperatures equal to or exceeding 65°C
- Capturing substantial amounts of waste heat
- Achieving Energy Reuse Effectiveness (ERE) values below one
- Developing a cost-effective prototype suitable for future high-performance computing environments
Since its inception in 2011, iDataCool has operated using hot-water cooling, with the energy reuse infrastructure finalized in 2012. The team has also contributed to projects such as QCDOC, QPACE, and the cooling solutions employed in SuperMUC. The project garnered notable recognition following its presentation at the 2013 International Supercomputing Conference held in Leipzig.
Background and design target
Since 1996, expenses related to power consumption and cooling for IT infrastructure have escalated more than fivefold. Conventional air cooling imposes limitations on packaging density and restricts opportunities for energy recovery. Conversely, water-based liquid cooling offers significantly higher thermal capacity, enabling increased density and reduced data center footprint—factors that have accelerated its adoption in high-performance computing settings. From 2009 onward, liquid-cooled systems have consistently topped the Green500 list of energy-efficient supercomputers.
Employing high-temperature liquid cooling facilitates either energy conservation or reuse depending on environmental conditions and infrastructure capabilities. Coolant temperatures above ambient levels allow for free cooling, thereby lowering chiller energy demands. At even higher temperatures, waste heat can be reclaimed for space heating or to operate adsorption chillers that generate chilled water. For example, Germany’s Leibniz-Rechenzentrum captures roughly 1 MW of heating output from its compute resources during winter through the SuperMUC installation.
The iDataCool initiative aims to maintain coolant temperatures above 65°C—an optimal threshold for commercial adsorption chillers—and seeks to demonstrate the long-term reliability of large-scale production systems under these conditions. A comparable approach utilizing direct hot-water cooling was previously validated by ETH Zürich’s Aquasar project, which operates around 60°C.
Architecture
Located at the University of Regensburg, the iDataCool system comprises three IBM System x iDataPlex racks, each housing 72 compute nodes. Every node contains two Intel Xeon Westmere CPUs alongside 24 GB of DDR3 SDRAM, arranged as a distributed shared memory configuration. Communication between nodes is managed via switched Infiniband, while disk I/O, system control, and monitoring rely on Gigabit Ethernet.
Initially designed with air cooling, ambient air was drawn through perforated front panels to cool power supplies, network switches, and compute nodes outfitted with passive heat sinks. Airflow was generated by fans integrated into power supplies and switches, complemented by fan assemblies dedicated to node cooling.
A joint effort between Regensburg’s particle physics division and IBM Research Böblingen resulted in a water-cooling system that replaces traditional fans and heat sinks. Custom-engineered copper heat sinks deliver water directly to processors, minimizing temperature gradients between CPU cores and coolant. Additionally, copper piping cools memory modules, chipsets, and voltage regulators.
All alterations were carried out at the University of Regensburg utilizing components fabricated within its physics department. The data center underwent upgrades to accommodate liquid cooling technology and has maintained stable operation with coolant temperatures reaching up to 70°C since 2011.
Energy recovery
iDataCool enables hot-water cooling with temperatures reaching up to 70°C. The system’s residual heat drives a low-temperature adsorption chiller (InvenSor LTC 09), which operates efficiently at approximately 65°C. This chiller generates chilled water utilized to cool additional data center hardware. The implementation of this energy recovery setup was finalized in the summer of 2012.
See also
- Data center
- HVAC
- Liquid cooling for computers
- Absorption refrigerator
- Computer cluster
- QPACE
- QPACE2
- SuperMUC
- Aquasar