Fraunhofer ITWM deployed Hercules, an 8.1-TFLOPS compute cluster for simulation, CAE, visualisation, seismic analysis, grid computing and parallel-software research.
The system used 272 Dell PowerEdge 1950 and 2950 servers containing 544 dual-core processors and 1,088 cores. It ranked 134th in the contemporary TOP500 list and ninth in Germany.
Intel 5148 low-voltage processors drew 40 W each. Four memory modules per node, SAS drives and BIOS-level fan optimisation reduced component power use.
Linux Networx integrated the cluster. Dell supplied power-efficient server hardware.
The machine room used outside-air cooling for ambient temperatures up to 20°C. A combined heat, power and cooling plant supplied summer cooling, while rack shields prevented warm exhaust air from recirculating.
Fraunhofer reported more than 0.1 GFLOPS per watt per node, total consumption below 80 kW and about a 30 percent reduction in server power through the efficiency measures.
