KAYTUS Liquid cooling-based high-density K24V2 server plays a pivotal role in advancing the HPC project at a German university

To unleash the enhanced performance of HPC, KAYTUS Liquid-Cooled High-Density Server harnessing high energy efficiency, minimal power consumption, and the green energy-saving approach ensures a sustainable expansion for the new platform.

Customer Introduction

The university client is one of the world's top universities in the domain of science and technology, particularly distinguished for its excellence in science, technology, and engineering. It holds a prominent position as one of Germany's "elite universities". 

Project Background

In Germany, the IT center of the university runs one of the fastest supercomputers in the country and is one of the National HPC Centers (NHR). This state-of-the-art facility plays a vital role in supporting researchers across all German universities, including its own. With the escalating demand for computing power in recent years, conventional platforms struggling to meet the increasing demand for computing power in terms of computational density, energy ratio, scalability, and flexibility. and the challenge of matching the linearity. The pressing challenge lies in achieving a harmonious balance between scaling and performance linearity, while at the same time taking into account the balance of capacity, performance, stability, resilience, and manageability, and the introduction of new architectures is imminent.

Business Challenges

1. The existing infrastructure of the university confronts the challenge of keeping up with the escalating demand for computing power. The surge in computational requirements, particularly in fields such as materials science, life science, CAE simulation, fluid mechanics, and other academic programs, has outpaced the capabilities of the existing HPC system at the university. The customer aims to build a green and energy-efficient HPC platform that will not only fulfill the growing demand for computational power but also provide a flexible and easily manageable solution.

2.  The main challenge is improving the energy efficiency compared to the existing platform. Customers have been pursuing higher computing power and node density of HPC systems.  However, this pursuit has introduced challenges related to power consumption, heat generation, and escalating cooling expenses. This amplification will also cause higher carbon emissions, resulting in all these factors becoming the limiting factor in the growth of their HPC systems which severely increases the customer's concerns.

As energy prices in Europe continue to rise and liquid cooling technology has already matured enough, customers are turning to more energy-efficient liquid cooling solutions to keep energy costs down.

KAYTUS Solution

After understanding the customer's pain points, combined with the customer's actual computing requirements and the demand for high-energy, low power consumption, scalable and stable computing nodes of the HPC system, KAYTUS leverages its cutting-edge liquid-cooled high-density servers K24V2. Through extensive testing, the K24V2 exhibits superior energy efficiency, making it the optimal choice for building liquid-cooled HPC systems. The cluster has comprised about 700 computing nodes, more than 30,000 processor cores, and a floating-point computing power of 5,000 TFLPOS, which fully satisfies the demand for rigorous computing performance in materials science, life science, CAE simulation, fluid mechanics, and other related applications.

1. High density and performance

The KAYTUS K24V2, a liquid-cooled, high-density server accommodates four dual-socket compute nodes within a compact 2U space. Each of these nodes is powered by two of Intel's cutting-edge Sapphire Rapids processors, and uses direct warm-water cooling to support up to eight 350W CPUs in 2U space.

2. Energy efficiency

The K24V2, KAYTUS' liquid-cooled high-density server, leverages advanced direct warm-water cooling technology, which covers the processor, memory, and VR within each node with cold plates. The integration of liquid cooling has significantly boosted cooling efficiency, resulting in an impressive improvement of up to 80%.

3. High reliability

The nodes of KAYTUS liquid-cooled high-density server K24V2 incorporates liquid leakage detection technology to ensure the reliability of the overall system, and when liquid leakage occurs, the nodes can be automatically powered off to avoid accidents.

Customer Benefits

The customer's HPC system is powered by KAYTUS' high-density and high-performance K24V2 servers, operating with advanced direct warm-water cooling technology. The liquid-cooled servers reduce data center cooling costs by 30% to 40% compared to traditional air-cooled technology and obtain impressive PUE ratings below 1.1, which not only facilitates heightened data center density without increasing the additional air-conditioning in the computer room but also ensures sustainability. Liquid cooling allows servers to operate at lower temperatures and helps to prolong the lifespan of components and servers. Moreover,  the operation of water-cooled servers is more subdued compared to the operation of high-rotation fans and air conditioners based on traditional air-cooled technology. This not only mitigates noise pollution, reducing headaches induced by the cacophony but also leads to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, marking a commendable stride toward environmental responsibility.

After the system went live, it significantly simplified the types of equipment and management complexity, improved operation and maintenance efficiency, and saved about 30% of operation and maintenance costs. The utilization of building block construction, coupled with a linear, on-demand rapid expansion approach, empowered the customer to substantially enhance deployment efficiency.

Highly integrated, reducing operating costs while ensuring the same data reliability and availability as the traditional architecture. The comprehensive management of the entire platform addresses challenges associated with both management complexities and IT issues arising from rapid business growth.

Enable parallel computing for a range of multidisciplinary tasks such as  material science, life science, CAE simulation, fluid mechanics, etc., to enhance the depth and breadth of comprehensive applications.