CLOUD

ST. LOUIS--Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE:EMR), is being hailed as a key technology provider helping to develop "one of the top-ranked supercomputing facilities in the world" at Virginia Tech, university officials said. Emerson is "pulling off miracles, raising glass ceilings and opening locked doors" with an international team of experts designing the supercomputer, said Hassan Aref, dean of Virginia Tech's College of Engineering. Emerson Network Power designed and provided the technology for the supercomputer's precision cooling system to keep its heat load under control, protecting against shutdowns that could result in losses of valuable research and data. The cooling system is especially critical because of heat generated by the supercomputer's first-of-its-kind "cluster" of 1,100 personal computers. Clustering technology provides educational institutions the ability to deploy supercomputing power without incurring the higher cost of a single, larger unit. "Based on the heat load for this supercomputing cluster, normal air conditioning units are not sufficient to protect this system's high- stakes, sensitive electronics," Emerson President James G. Berges said. "Emerson Network Power's new high-density precision cooling system answered the supercomputer's unique heat load requirements, as well as the university's budget and tight time constraints for this project." Standard air conditioning technology for the supercomputer also presented the dilemma of wind velocities up to 60 mph under the raised floor of the computer room, said Patricia Arvin, associate vice president, information systems and computing, Virginia Tech. "Emerson has worked to solve every problem we've encountered - including developing a cooling solution for high-density computer configurations - and they've done it in record time," Arvin said. Emerson Network Power technology for the supercomputer includes the Liebert XD(TM) family of cooling solutions, designed to deliver efficient, high-capacity supplemental cooling without consuming valuable data center floor space. Powerful fan units, coils and chillers draw hot air away from the supercomputer's sensitive electronics, providing the proper temperature and humidity for top performance. In addition, Emerson Network Power will be supplying the reliable power technology to protect the new supercomputer from costly failures in the event of power surges or blackouts, with the installation of Liebert UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) systems. Virginia Tech researchers will use the new supercomputer to help better understand complex topics of worldwide significance, including nanoscale electronics, chemistry, aerodynamics, molecular statics, and computational acoustics. Srinidhi Varadarajan, the director of the university's Terascale Supercomputing Facility and the architect of the cluster, expects the supercomputer to be functioning by Oct. 1.