Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good morning, Sam.
Hello, Michael.
Now, Sam, have you ever thought about the quantity of power needed to run a supercomputer?
Chapter 2: How much power does the UK's fastest supercomputer use?
I don't dwell on it, but I do imagine it is probably like tons and tons of gigawatts, maybe like a terawatt or something. You're a techie person. Do you know how much your home computer uses?
Oh, I think it uses about between 100 and 200 watts. Like if it's really under load, maybe 300 watts, but like not a lot of energy. But Sam, today we are still in Bristol at the UK's fastest supercomputer to find out how you run a system of this magnitude in the most efficient way possible. I'm Michael Bird.
I'm Sam Jarrell, and welcome to Technology Now from HPE.
All right, well, welcome back to the second part of our episode pair exploring Isambard AI, the UK's fastest supercomputer. And don't worry if you missed the first episode. We will link to it in the show notes, but you can also watch both episodes independently.
Exactly. And because these are both video episodes, make sure to check us out wherever you watch your podcasts and as well as wherever you listen to them. Now, Michael, you're still in Bristol for this episode, and I believe you mentioned that we're talking about efficiency today.
Yes, well, supercomputers use a lot of power and they can get out quite a lot of heat. So finding ways to reduce the power and to use the energy more efficiently can be just as much of a financial issue as a sustainability one.
Oh, for sure. And we've spoken about this before on the podcast, both doing episodes on things like heat reclamation from direct liquid cooling.
Yeah, and they use direct liquid cooling as part of their systems here at Isambard AI. But there's far more to running a facility like this than efficiency and cooling alone. So to find out more, I met up with Dr. Emma Rose, center manager for the Bristol Center for Supercomputing. The first thing I wanted to do was to get to grips with the scale of the power requirements for Isambard AI.
Emma, we're stood in front of a panel with some information on it. Could you just tell me what we're looking at here?
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Chapter 3: What cooling methods are employed at Isambard AI?
So there's two coolers out here to cool the two sets of racks that we've got inside. Each one of them uses about 16 kilowatts of electricity if it's running at full capacity. Bear in mind that each side of Isambard AI will use up to two megawatts. So 16 kilowatts to cool two megawatts worth of heat.
That's quite efficient. That's not a lot of energy. And so you talked about the water dripping down. I mean, it's a closed loop system, except for when it gets super, super hot. How much water is this system using in a typical year maybe?
Because the UK doesn't get that hot, we estimate that we would lose and drain away about 21 houses, their typical UK homes worth of water in a year. So if you think an average sort of cul-de-sac in a town with 21 houses in it, the amount of water that those 21 houses would use is roughly what we think we'd use in a year.
So not loads of water?
Chapter 4: How does Isambard AI ensure energy efficiency?
No, not at all. It's very much a closed loop system. Okay. So why did you go for a closed loop system? I mean, what other design options are there?
Well, really at the moment, the only other design option is for an air-cooled system. Okay. So one of the other big advantages about using a closed-loop system is there's potential to reuse the heat. So we can harness the heat that's generated of us in bad AI and potentially heat surrounding buildings with that water, with that heat that's trapped in the water.
If we use an air-cooled system, then that would just get lost into the atmosphere.
Okay. Okay. So there's a potential for that to be used. And presumably it's way more, I mean, it's way more efficient than air cooling.
Absolutely. Way more efficient. I mean, we also have a chiller and that's to cool. I talked earlier about the critical systems. They are air cooled and the chiller is to cool the environments around those. But that chiller alone uses more electricity than the two coolers that we've got.
Wow. Okay.
So it gives you an idea just of the efficiency of those coolers and this.
So, so super efficient. Okay. I do want to talk about sort of heat recovery. Can you go into it more detail? Like how would that, how does that work? How would that work?
So the liquid that comes off Isn't Bad AI is roughly 40 degrees when it comes off the system. Heat recovery, we've got the pipe work on site to be able to do this. You would need a heat pump to warm that up to about 70 degrees.
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Chapter 5: What renewable energy sources power Isambard AI?
Yeah, it felt a similar size. It was quite impressive cooling. These big fans just running air through the radiators was really interesting. So Sam, obviously one of the big things that sets Isambard AI apart from other supercomputers is the modular nature of it. And so as a final thought, I wanted to know if Emma thought they might become trendsetters going forward.
Will Isambard AI become a model that other high-performance computers and AI data centers could be based on?
I think so, absolutely. I mean, the modular data centre approach is, as you've heard before, is fast, it's efficient, it's much cheaper than a bricks and mortar building.
And heat reuse, the ability to reuse the heat that's generated from such huge infrastructures such as this and use it to effectively, as you said before, as another utility generator is absolutely the way to go in terms of energy efficiency as well.
Okay, that brings us to the end of Technology Now for this week. Thank you to our guest, Dr. Emma Rose. And of course, to our listeners, thank you so much for joining us.
Yes, and if you've enjoyed this episode, please do let us know. Rate and review us wherever you listen to episodes. And if you want to get in contact with us, send us an email to technologynow at hp.com subject line mod pod. And don't forget to subscribe so you can listen first every week. Technology Now is hosted by Sam, Gerald, and myself, Michael Bird.
And this episode was produced by Harry Lamput and Izzy Clark, with production support from Alicia Kempson-Taylor, Becky Bird, Elissa Mitry, and Janessa Ayosh. Our video editor was Leon Radzinski-Gorman, and our theme music was composed by Greg Hooper.
Our social editorial team is Rebecca Wissinger, Judy Ann Goldman, and Jacqueline Green. And our social media designers are Alejandra Garcia and Ambar Maldonado.
Technology Now is a Fresh Air production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
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Chapter 6: How does Isambard AI handle power outages?
And we'll see you at the same time, the same place next week. Cheers.