Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

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Fusion power, the same process that fuels the sun, is often called “the Holy Grail” of energy research. If scientists could harness fusion power, it could help solve environmental issues such as climate change by producing energy without greenhouse gas emissions or radioactivity. Moreover, fusion power is based on hydrogen, which is plentiful and readily available. Scientists estimate that the top two inches of water in Lake Erie represent a potential fusion energy source equivalent to the world’s known oil reserves.

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has been performing fusion research since the 1950s and holds the record for creating the highest temperatures ever recorded on earth in its “tokamak” experimental fusion reactor. Over the years, the application of high-performance computer systems has helped advance the progress of this research. Prior to 2006, the lab had been using a high-performance computing (HPC) grid of Datel servers with AMD Athlon processors to compare data from fusion reactor experiments to computer models, design future fusion reactors, and control, in real time, the magnetic fields used to confine the fusion reaction to its test chamber.

The Datel systems were intended to be cost-effective compared to the monolithic supercomputers they had replaced, but they were not providing the performance and reliability that researchers needed to rapidly model, analyze and distribute experimental data. Researchers often waited weeks for results

In addition, up to 50 percent of all analyses were failing on account of server shutdowns. Several environmental factors were contributing to these failures, including the way the servers were arranged on racks and low humidity that filled the air with static electricity. PPPL addressed these problems and made some availability improvements, but the legacy servers were still running too hot and failing as a result. It turned out that the servers had a poor air flow design that trapped heat inside the casing and caused systems to fail. The high cooling and electric power requirements of the servers were also adding to PPL’s operating costs.

PPPL recognized the need to overhaul its HPC server infrastructure for better performance, reliability and energy efficiency. After evaluating several options, the lab decided to replace its grid of 190 Datel systems with 180 eco-friendly Sun Fire X2100 servers with AMD Opteron processors running Red Hat Enterprise Linux. PPL has also deployed Sun Fire X4100, V20z and V240 servers within its research network.

The Sun x64 servers offered the best HPC price-performance along with exceptional reliability and power efficiency that further drove down TCO. Since deploying the Sun servers, the lab estimates performance improvements of 300-400 percent. Researchers can now now do a lot more and push their calculations further during number-crunching runs that may last 100-300 hours. Reliability issues have all been eliminated, with more than 99.9% of all key operations now completed successfully.

The lab has been closely monitoring the power consumption of the new Sun Fire X2100 servers. At full load, each of the Sun servers draws .9 amps at full sustained load, compared to 2.90 amps per legacy server. Based on electricity costs of $0.12 per kilowatt-hour to run the servers and cool the datacenter, the Sun Fire servers save PPPL $80,000 per year.

PPPL is using the cool-running Sun systems to replicate the sun on earth. The possible outcome is a clean, virtually limitless energy source that could solve major environmental problems. It’s fitting that eco-friendly Sun servers enable PPPL to pursue such an important goal while conserving energy and minimizing environmental impacts.