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Dr. Emma Rose

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
88 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

2.4 megawatts as it's using at the moment, there's no generators that would keep that sustained for long enough.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

We do have some critical systems on the site that we do need to keep going.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

The cooling, for instance, we would want to keep going in the event of a power cap.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

And we've also got some air-cooled equipment that ran as storage and our logins and management nodes.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

We need that to keep going because if that shuts down suddenly, it does take a long time to bring it back up again.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

So we have a generator on the site that will keep it going for a few hours in the event of a power cap.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

So within the modular data center itself, there's big air conditioning units.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

So the air around us is reasonably cool.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

But the GPUs, it's a closed loop system of a glycol water mixture that runs over the GPUs and extracts the heat.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

Takes them out to the coolers outside.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

And then once it's been cooled by the coolers, it's returned back into the system again.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

Yeah, absolutely.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

So the blue pipes are the cool liquid that's just come off the coolers.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

And it runs through the GPUs, extracts the heat, and then it comes through on the red pipes.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

Absolutely, yes.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

Absolutely, definitely.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

The only alternative is air-cooled and that's got some huge disadvantages in terms of sustainability.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

It would also mean that the system itself would take up about eight times the space that we're using at the moment.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

So the system is very dense, densely packed in a relatively small area because it's direct liquid-cooled.

Technology Now
Powering the UK's fastest supercomputer: Isambard AI

It's a water glycol mix.