IBM building water-cooled supercomputer

IBM is constructing the system for the Bavarian Academy of Science's Leibniz Supercomputing Centre

IBM has announced plans to construct a water-cooled supercomputing cluster in Germany.

The company is constructing the system for the Bavarian Academy of Science's Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Garching, Germany. Dubbed "SuperMUC", the system will primarily be used for scientific research and simulations.

The system will run on Intel Xeon processors and could have a top speed of 3 petaflops.

The most significant feature of SuperMUC, however, will be the cooling system. IBM said that rather than conventional air-cooling systems, the cluster will make use of a new water-cooled design.

By using water cooling, which the company said is as much as 4,000 times more efficient than air, IBM hopes to design a supercomputer that can be as much as 40 per cent more energy efficient than a conventionally cooled system.

"With the new supercomputer, the German and European research community is getting a push to be on the forefront of international competition," said IBM Germany chair Martin Jetter,

"Continued investment in research and development will allow us to see top research results in the future, in return."

Currently being designed by teams in the US, Asia and Europe, IBM said that it hopes to have the system online by 2012.