Electronic blood is both cooling and powering the computer

Engineers at some of the world's largest technology companies are facing a problem: supercomputers are becoming so powerful that they can overcome our energy supply. To solve this problem, researchers from IBM computer firms are using the mechanism of an existing machine for thousands of years: the human brain.

>>>IBM's supercomputer set a new record

Our brain structure is thousands of times denser and more efficient than any computer today, because it uses the same network of blood vessels to simultaneously transport heat and energy - according to Bruno. Michel, a material science specialist with IBM Research.

IBM's new technology - called "electronic blood" - may take decades to apply widely, but researchers have proven it works effectively in the laboratory. Specifically, a fluid carrying electric current is transmitted into the computer's processor to cool and charge electricity to provide the energy needed for them to function.

According to experts, today's supercomputers are too big in size, in part because of the huge heat they create, which means that the chips are not allowed to be placed too close together because they are very easily damaged. But if equipped with liquid cooling and power supply systems, they can be stacked in three dimensions (ie stacked on top, bottom, front and back), one The technique allows to significantly shrink the size of the computer.

Currently, a "petaflop" supercomputer - capable of performing one billion billions of calculations per second - occupies about half the football field. But if you use stacked chips in the same 3D format as above and combine with "electronic blood", IBM thinks its size can be reduced by a desktop computer."What we want to do is create future water-cooled supercomputers that are about the size of a sugar cube, " added Chris Sciacca, IBM Research Department spokesman.

Currently, nearly half of the energy consumed by supercomputers is used for cooling the entire system, with fans and other methods. In the US alone, data centers now account for more than 2% of the country's electricity consumption - according to researchers at Villanova University. Thus, if the global "cloud computing" industry is considered a country, it will be "the fifth largest energy consumer in the world" , said Ed Turkel of the Hyperscale business division. HP computer, said

In less than 20 years, researchers predict that the world's fastest supercomputers will theoretically be able to perform one trillion trillion calculations per second, 300,000 times faster than current systems. onions. The big problem is that if using current technology, IBM said that a computer will consume more electricity than the total electricity that the world can produce. Therefore, IBM expert Michel said "we need to make supercomputers use energy 10,000 times more efficiently today." That is the goal when they develop "electronic blood".