[duff_beer_dragon]

Just goes to show, I was thinking of linking this primarily because I'd like everyone to see those really cool computers they have at sgi, and because there is info. about the computers' usages in oil explorations and - depletion modelling.

[url=http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2004/october/oil_deposits.html]Silicon Graphics and Landmark Graphics Announce Breakthrough in Search for New Oil Deposits

Visual Computing Uncovers Previously Unseen Details from Below the Earth's Surface[/url]

[stayathomedad]

water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Those computers are cool, so just wait to see the cost for them in your gas bill.

[duff_beer_dragon]

I have very little knowledge of the sgi internal infrastructure, how do you know they ain't using heat-exchange in the fan or cooling systems?

computers consume most power thru their powerpacks (unsurprisingly) and moreso their monitors.......

from the ratings required on the internal components of a PC, I'd take a wild guess and say that the fan /s will be using about the most power, other than the monitor, so as to keep the processor /s cool.

You only need a couple of monitors to display results ; they are most likely using plasmas or lcds - I don't know about those power consuptions, they might be using crts that don't even require as many colours for example as this one I'm using now has.

And - look at the amount of processors in a typical sgi - are they really going to overheat quite as much?

As fer water -

I'm a big fan (not consuming resources for it) of rainwater collection systems, grey water recycling, reed bed and related ( plants for cleansing ) sewage / waste water treatments - see the links pages here, there should be a link for CAT ( plus a bunch of other similar links ), if not, I can certainly post it here.

[stayathomedad]

those sgi computers are not cheap, and they take a lot of resources to run. so you have a center like that and it will easily consume the power of 2 one family homes. there is very little you can do to reduce the consumption of computers, as you need to keep the environment at a constant temperature, and all the electricity gets converted into heat as the cpu and all the chips do their thing. as they are supercomputers, you cannot just switch them on and off as you need them, they are on 24/7 and they need a about 68F room all day and week and year.

the heat exchengers have been tried, and are still used in some computers, even new ones, but they cannot recapture the energy spent, as it takes more to run them as you get out of it, they just are there to dissipate the heat those computers generate. these computers are very expensive, so people take few risks to damage them.

the fans are an example, yes they consume power, but you need them to dissipate the heat from the chips. with a computer that has, let's say 64 CPU's you are talking about 500 Watts that get converted into heat, by the cpu alone.

where these computers help, is that you do not need all the folks out on the fields drilling, exploring, etc. this is where the savings come in. but they are not real savings, in terms of money, just another way to allocate resources.

so if you look at it, working on an sgi is a lot more fun than drilling a wild cat, probably more economical as well, in terms of energy use, but you are talking about a computer center which costs you easily $15 million a year, the stuff you need, the software licenses, the proof of concepts, training the folks etc etc.

I think as well it is cool stuff, but I do not believe that it will solve the energy issues, it is really just helping to lower the cost of generating that energy we need.

[duff_beer_dragon]

How do you know what they are using there at sgi ?

I am not trying to be funny, cause I think you secretly work there or something and am trying to catch you out, I mean it - how do you know what tech. whoever has?

The cooling systems I was refering to don't need fans, hence I meant that if such were in use then the power consumption drops.

The running ambient temperature - now we're talking - in a global-based society, of course this would be reduced if not avoided entirely because the machines would be located in cooler countries. Where I live you'd never need air cooling systems, we maybe get about one week total per year where you may feel you need to use a fan (not for computers for you!) and even then, I've never experienced heat here to that extent - you can just open a window and that works.

There's a lot of oil in Azerbaijan as well.