The Evaluation and Development of an Efficient Cooling System for High Performance Computing Applications Raaghul Senthilkumar and Ronik Sheth CURENT, University of Tennessee Final Presentation July 16, 2014 Knoxville, Tennessee

Presentation Outline 2 Research Goal Background Methods Results Discussion

Research Goal Early models of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 suffered from such problems stemming from an improperly designed cooling scheme. The research goal was to evaluate the cooling system of an Xbox 360 console and to determine what caused the console to fail. 3

Background Basic Understanding of Hardware Thermal Management Introduction to Red Ring of Death 4

Basics of Computer Hardware 5 CPU GPU

Integrated Circuits A integrated circuit consists of millions of transistors Transistors have two possible states 6

Central Processing Unit (CPU) 7 Xenon processor  Manufactured by IBM  Single Die Multi-Core Processor  Three Cores  Two Threads 90 nm Process

Graphics Processing Units (GPU) Xenos Processor  Manufactured by AMD  Two Dies  eDRAM  Unified Shader Architecture 90 nm Process 48 Unified Shaders  Combined Pixel and Vertex Shaders  More Efficient 8

Thermal Management Passive Cooling  Air Cooling  Heat Sink Active Cooling  Fans  Liquid Cooling 9

Heat Sinks Passive Cooling Transfers thermal waste to the air Heat Pipes Surface Area 10 Figure 1: Heat Sinks Upper Left: 1 st Gen CPU; Upper Right: 2 nd Gen CPU; Bottom Left: 1 st Gen GPU; Bottom Right: 2 nd Gen GPU

Fans Active Cooling Air Cooling 11

Intro To Red Ring of Death The infamous Red Ring of Death was caused by flaws in the design of the cooling scheme. Overheating weakened the soldering connections underneath the chips 12

Methodology Different combinations of the heat sinks were then implemented to see which combination keeps the Xbox 360 running without failure. Two different cooling fans were also used to see which fan kept temperatures low. Thermal sensors were used to measure the temperature of the integrated circuits. 13

Results 14

Results 15

Results 16

Discussions of Thermal Management The Xbox 360 manages thermal waste through a system of passive and active cooling. When designing an effective cooling scheme, the implementation of an efficient ventilation system is necessary. Ventilation enables the heat to be transferred out from the device. 17

Results 18

Discussion of Economics The liabilities stemming from the repairs of Xbox 360 would lower the profitability of the Xbox 360. A properly designed cooling scheme increases would have allowed for more powerful chips. By shortening the “Time to Market”, they were able to reach the market before the Playstation 3 and keep the cost of development lower. 19

References Europe/article7667.htm Launched+Faulty+Hardware/article10434.htm responds-sonys-success http:// responds-sonys-success ReleaseAndWebcast/FY14/Q3/default.aspxhttp:// ReleaseAndWebcast/FY14/Q3/default.aspx to-markethttp://techreport.com/news/13974/microsoft-insider-xbox-360-was-rushed- to-market ueryText%3Dxbox+360http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&arnumber= &q ueryText%3Dxbox+360 Jeff 20

Acknowledgements 21 Thanks to Terence Randall, Chris Crowder, and Dr. Kamrul Islam This work was supported primarily by the Engineering Research Center Program of the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy under NSF Award Number EEC and the CURENT Industry Partnership Program.

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