IBM Shifting Focus to Zero-Emission Data Centers

Posted 11/09/2009 at 4:48am | by Paul Lilly

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IBM continues to focus on going green and is now hard at work developing technology that could lead to zero-emission data centers, according to a report at eWeek.com.

Bruno Michel, the guy in charge of Advanced Thermal Packaging at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory, said he and his team have put their heads together trying to figure out new ways of reducing emissions and waste in data centers. Among the ideas being tossed around are chip stacking and liquid cooling.

"High-performance liquid cooling allows data centers to operate with coolant temperatures above the free cooling limit in all climates, eliminating the need for chillers and allowing the thermal energy to be reused in cold climates," Michel said.

According to Michel, his team has been able to remove 85 percent the heat load from high-performance compute nodes at a temperature of 60C.

As data centers continue to consume more energy, expect more companies to devote increasing amounts of R&D into reducing emissions.

Image Credit: datacenterknowledge.com