[Beowulf] Rack power requirement question

[Bill Rankin]

>>so I thought it best to collect several 
>>opinions and then present an answer based on those values. If you
>>have a moment please fill in your best guess for power
>>consumption values, in 2008, in kilowatts for:

> The only reasonably easy one, to me at least, is #3. :)  I'd say 10kW, 
> assuming around 40 nodes at 250W apiece.  If you don't like 250W/node 
> increase accordingly e.g. to 12kW.

For a fully loaded 42U rack (40 Dell 1750 Dual 3.2 GHz Xeons, 2 GigE 
switches) we are seeing around 350W/node fully loaded.  That's 
14kW+/rack for power and 4 tons HVAC.

Haven't done the measurements on a EM64T or Opteron 250 yet.

Blades will get you denser, but as been already discussed, getting that 
much cold air into the front apiture of a rack is a special sort of pain.

-bill