Posts by Kevin Nolan

Firefox nabs 30 million users in eight weeks

Windows 7

I wonder how much of this is a result of people trying out the Windows 7 RC?

Met warns officers off photographers

Good News.

This is good news. I could be moving to London next year and I was worried about heading out with my SLR. Fortunately the Cops here in Ireland seem to understand, ahem, not care.

Right-wing Oz politico in nude snaps rumpus

1970s?

I didn't know they had cunsumer digital cameras back in the '70s...

Taliban extends mobile shutdown order

erm?

For a shower of fundies who banned television and other forms of entertainment isn't it funny when they get pissed cos they get shot at when trying to beat their score in snake?

Google demanding Intel's hottest chips?

@ Anton Ivanov

And hence Google's request for chips that can run +5 degrees...

From a cooling perspective a chip with a 100W/70C heat load needs to be cooled at least to about 50 Celsius above ambient. This puts the thermal resistance to ambient required for cooling at 21C (70F) at 0.5 c/W. If Google simply used better heatsinks they can get this down to 0.4 c/W which means the same chip at 70C dumping to 27C (80F). Achieving 0.4 c/W is not that big or a problem. Bulky desktop heatsinks approach 0.1 c/W.

However just sticking servers in an air conditioned room (box) isn't an efficient way to cool. Hot and cold corridors only work if you limit mixing to the heatsinks.

Data centers embrace The Great Outdoors

Basic thermodynamics

Its just not efficient to use heat generated from servers. The Carnot efficiency is too low as the overall temperature rise to too small.