Datacenter Forum
Datacenter Forum
Datacenter Forum
Datacenter Forum
Events & Webinars Datacenter directory
  • Share page on Linkedin
  • Share page on Facebook
  • Share page on Twitter
  • Link copied!
slider-image
Start
Upcoming Events
Datacenter Directory
DatacenterFlix
Topics
About us
Partner login
BLOG

new physics trick may make computers emit less heat in the future

Cooling Fans Facebook Data Center in Sweden
  • Datacenter Forum news, knowledge, inspiration & events
    Start
  • Data center forum Events & webinars
    Upcoming Events
  • Datacenter Forum topics
    Topics
  • Data center directory - who's who in the datacenter industry
    Datacenter Directory
  • about Datacenter Forum
    About us
  • Datacenter Forum portal
    Partner login
  • Datacenter Forum Training
    Training
  • Partner up
    Partner up
  • Datacenter Forum video channels
    DatacenterFlix
Datacenter Forum
updated: 20-11-2020 | 15:13
Share page on Linkedin Share page on Facebook Share page on Twitter Link copied!

A new physics trick may make computers emit less heat in the future. On paper, physicists even dive below the bare minimum that Mother Nature allows.

The photos from Facebook's data center in Luleå, Sweden, don't lie. Head-high fans slurp in cold arctic air to cool countless simmering processors. It illustrates a fundamental law: computer systems always produce heat. And that takes energy.

Last year Physicist Jan Klaers (University of Twente)  revealed in the journal Physical Review Letters a loophole in the laws of physics, which allows computers to emit less heat. That makes them more energy-efficient on paper than previously thought possible.

To do this, he fights an idea that has been in the physics textbooks since 1961. This is the so-called Landauer limit, named after the German physicist Rudolf Landauer. He discovered that when computer memory is deleted or reset, heat is always released. Not because one part of a hard disk grinds over the other, but because nature sets an absolute lower limit to the energy that you lose when you calculate with bits and bytes. Calculating more energy-efficiently than that limit is therefore not possible. In 2012, the existence of the Landauer limit was experimentally confirmed.

In determining his limit, Landauer assumed a system in which there is no heat difference. Physicists then say that the system is "in thermal equilibrium." You can compare it to a cold cup of coffee on your desk, which has the same temperature as its surroundings. "But computer systems in the real world are almost never in balance," says Klaers. They look more like a hot cup of coffee, which radiates heat when it cools down.

"Heat is created in the interior of computers with every calculation," says Klaers. This creates heat fluctuations that dance to the rhythm of the processor. The result is that the system becomes unbalanced: it is warmer in the same place during a calculation, but shortly afterwards it is colder there. And you can make good use of it.

Thought experiment


Klaers devised a thought experiment to determine what an unbalanced environment does with the Landauer limit. In doing so, he takes one of the simplest bits you could build in the lab: a single particle that is in a box with a left and right space. If the particle is on the left, you call it "0", if it is on the right, it is called "1". Anyone who wants to erase the information - make a 0 out of the 1 - pushes the particle from the right to the left space with a small piston. The amount of energy that that costs is equal to the Landauer limit. But the nice thing now, Klaers argues, is that pushing away sometimes costs less energy when the environment is out of balance, such as inside a computer. That happens, he determined, when it is colder in the area.

At a particle level, temperature is nothing more than the average speed of particles. When air feels hot, particles are more likely to bump into our skin. Likewise, particles in cold air move more slowly. In Klaers' thought experiment, this principle ensures that the particle pushes less hard against the piston in a colder environment, so that you can move it more easily from right to left. Changing the bit therefore requires less energy. In a colder environment you can therefore calculate more efficiently than the Landauer limit would otherwise allow.

To achieve that, you would normally have to cool a system, which immediately wipes out your energy gains. But in computers, Klaers argues, you get such an environment out of thermal equilibrium as free by-catch. Because it is alternately slightly warmer and colder in one place, you can make the computer more energy-efficient through convenient timing. "You have to anticipate the temperature fluctuations and delete or reset bits when the environment is colder," says Klaers.

energy benefit

However, this is not so easy in practice, emphasizes physicist Eric Lutz (University of Stuttgart), who is not involved in the research. He points out that Klaers does not write down in his publication how you should implement his idea in practice. Moreover, he does not write anywhere exactly how much energy benefit it delivers. "While that is precisely the most interesting question," says Lutz.

Nevertheless, Lutz calls the idea "interesting". "In the last few years, more and more studies have emerged that study the Landauer limit in systems that are out of balance," he says. Klaers is the first to propose a way to apply those ideas in real computers.

Klaers confirms the criticism. "I plan to do further research to find out in more detail how you should do this practically," he says.

By the way, Klaers is convinced that his idea could be useful for the current generation of computers, which still lose about a thousand times more heat than the Landauer limit would allow. "The energy savings that computation provides in a colder environment always works, even well above the limit. So we don't have to wait for computers to be more efficient."

Other items


RISE and Castrol to develop next gen DC cooling fluids
News RISE and Castrol to develop next gen DC cooling fluids RISE
Data Center Career Pathfinder
News Uptime Institute Completes Acquisition of CNet Training Uptime Institute
Bulk Data Centers Launches Renewable Power Matching
News Bulk Data Centers Launches Renewable Power Matching Bulk Infrastructure
Equinix signs third PPA in Finland
News Equinix signs third PPA in Finland Equinix
Finland connects quantum computer to supercomputer
News Finland connects quantum computer to supercomputer CSC - IT Center for Science
Whitepaper image
Whitepaper Grid-interactive data centers: enabling decarbonization and system stability Eaton
Kingston memory and storage supporting the needs of a leading hosting provider
Blog Kingston memory and storage supporting the needs of a leading hosting provider Kingston Technology
Datacenter Forum Stockholm 2022
Channel Datacenter Forum Stockholm 2022 Datacenter Forum
Transform your power network
Video Transform your power network Eaton
Whitepaper image
Whitepaper SSDs: The changing face of data storage Kingston Technology
EU adopts Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive
News EU adopts Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive Datacenter Forum
China's massive datacenter relocation to cooler regions with ample renewable energy
News China's massive datacenter relocation to cooler regions with ample renewable energy Datacenter Forum
Filters

Topics

Specify search results.
Datacenter Forum
Datacenter Forum
ABOUT US

Creating valuable relations between all community members in the data center industry by offering news, knowledge, network opportunities and inspiration since 2014

More about us  |  Privacy policy

CONTACT US

 

Nygatan 17

54230 Mariestad

Sweden

 

info@datacenter-forum.com

Oslo 2023 Helsinki 2023 Copenhagen 2023 Stockholm 2023
SOCIAL