Aug. 29, 2008 - Cray has developed a new liquid cooling technology that it says will allow computers to operate at petaflop speed (one quadrillion of calculations per second) while delivering significant energy savings.

The new ECOphlex technology saves energy by enabling greater system density, reducing the need for air cooling and air conditioners and limiting the need for chilled water, according to Cray.

"Most large computers today exhaust heat into the air, and then the computer room air conditioner [CRAC] units have to remove the heat from the air and put it into chilled water. This method is very inefficient," explains Cray chief technology officer Steve Scott. "For a petascale system, the area taken up by the CRAC units could exceed the computer footprint, wasting precious datacenter space and energy. Other systems use chilled water coils embedded in each computer cabinet and sometimes even embedded invasively into the compute blades. With ECOphlex technology, you still use chilled water, but much less of it."

Cray XT5 systems will begin shipping with the new ECOphlex system later this year.

The cooling technology comes as demand for computing capacity continues to skyrocket, prompting market leaders to explore new ways to reduce energy consumption while boosting performance. In July, IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer - the first to achieve a peak performance of more than 1 petaflop - earned one of the top slots in this year's Green500, an annual ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world.