Lenovo NeXtScale WCT Helps Supercomputing Center Save Energy and Improve Efficiency
The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Germany adopted Lenovo NeXtScale WCT for the second phase of SuperMUC. As the first HPC cluster to use warm water cooling technology, the Lenovo NeXtScale System achieves a PUE of up to 1.1, with 9216 nodes and a peak computing speed of 2.897 trillion (Gflops), achieving an overall efficiency of 90.95%. Over five years, the total electricity cost decreased from 27.6 million euros to 17.4 million euros, saving over 10 million euros. This system employs world-leading warm water cooling technology to efficiently cool components such as processors, memory, and I/O cards, supporting a maximum inlet water temperature of 45°C. In terms of performance, the single-node floating-point computation exceeds 1 trillion, the highest for processors of the same level, significantly reducing energy consumption. Unlike traditional cooling with a 16°C inlet water temperature, warm water cooling technology allows the system to discharge water at over 70 degrees, which can be used for building heating and greenhouse cultivation, achieving secondary utilization of water. This not only realizes a high energy efficiency ratio but also meets the green data center goals, saving operational costs and building heating expenses.