High-power computer sites around the UK are experiencing problems due to the unprecedented heatwave, with some equipment being shut down to avoid damage. One company says it will be building a new data centre with increased cooling capacity. The growing trend for renting powerful cloud-based computing hardware means that many others are able to carry on as usual, though.
at the University of Liverpool, UK, told New 杏吧原创 that some hardware at an AI firm听he owns was shut down yesterday due to the heatwave. Although the company鈥檚 software that users interact with is hosted elsewhere in the cloud, the equipment at its data centre controls updates, meaning that none could take place until temperatures were safe enough to reboot the machines.
鈥淲e ran at reduced capacity and shut down completely at 16:15 after monitoring equipment temperatures,鈥� he says.
Advertisement
Murray says the company is in the process of building a new data centre that will have more cooling capacity. 鈥淲e will learn from this week鈥檚 experiences.鈥�
One IT support worker at a visual effects company in London, who asked to remain anonymous, said he had several layers of plans in place to shut equipment down depending on the maximum temperature today.
鈥淲e鈥檝e looked over what we don鈥檛 need in our machine room and are turning it off. Some of our render machines are not likely to be used, so we鈥檙e turning them off to take the pressure off the air conditioning,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t will be a bit annoying for our teams, but can be worked around.鈥�
鈥淚f this continues to be a problem, we will need to invest more time and money in improving machine rooms, and it might accelerate the general trend of outsourcing machine room space to either cloud providers or data centres operated by third parties,鈥� he says.
When companies rent computer power in the cloud, those machines could be located anywhere, and are generally part of huge data centres with powerful cooling that means they can escape the effects of heatwaves, although they generate large amounts of carbon emissions in the process.
at Jellyfish Pictures, a visual effects and animation studio, says his company uses several cloud computing suppliers. 鈥淭his being the case, we are not held to ransom by heatwaves in the UK,鈥� he says.
Larger firms in the UK that operate their own data centres, such as Nvidia, which runs what was until recently the UK鈥檚 most powerful supercomputer, can also invest heavily in cooling.
at Nvidia says that the graphics processing units (GPUs) in the company鈥檚 supercomputer and other machines have built-in temperature protection. 鈥淭he GPU will automatically reduce clock speed and power usage if it senses abnormally high temperatures, and eventually shuts down completely if the over-temperature condition persists,鈥� he says.
