Home

Contact Us

Services and
Products

• News

• Distributed Control Systems
  SCADA, PLCs, HMIs

• Bespoke Electronics
  Custom Instrumentation, Retrofits, Prototyping

• Consultancy

• Test Rigs

• Linear Potentiometers

• 3 Dimensional Displacement Transducers

• Computing
  Clusters

Client List

High Density Computer Clusters - Case Study

JK Controls Ltd were approached by a UK based biomedical company to provide a multiple PC computer farm.  The customer needed to accommodate as many PCs as possible in their machine room, so the floor space per PC was important. 

The simple solution of using standard personal mini tower cases arranged on shelves had been considered.  Assuming 3 cases high and about 700mm rear access, the floor area used would be about 0.096m²  per PC, much too large for the customer requirements.  The conventional solution in this circumstance would then be to build desktop format PCs in a 19 inch industrial equipment rack.  Each PC case would be 177mm (4U) high giving a maximum of 10 PCs in a full height rack.  This would still use a large floor area since the heavy racks would be immovable and personnel access space at the rear of the racks would be necessary for maintenance and cable installation, but the footprint would come down to 0.090m² per PC.  Additionally the building elevator dimensions may limit the accessibility of large racking enclosures to the place of installation, thus requiring a high level of on site erection time.  For even higher densities, this same solution can be applied but using 2U (88.5mm) high cases, however the rear access and elevator problems still remain and the density will still be 0.045m² per PC.  Also many commercial cases have cooling air flow restrictions, particularly in larger clusters.

The JK Controls computer cluster solution improves the packing density further to give a footprint of only 0.032m² per PC.  Also, our modular designs permitted easy installation.

To achieve this performance standard PC components are built into our own design slim sub chassis which are in turn slid into our special rack enclosure system, 5 to an  enclosure.  The rack enclosures are stacked up to 4 high plus a matching network system enclosure.  All connections are made to the fronts of the PCs utilizing an integrated cable management design.  This arrangement allows the stack to stand close to the equipment room wall, reducing floor occupancy.  The enclosure design also incorporates a chimney volume to guarantee exit air flow space.  The design has been severely tested to verify temperature management. 

A further advantage to the customer is the built in power handling arrangements.  Standard PC power supply modules use switch mode technology.  This technology causes a very high current surge at initial switch on.  Switching on a large cluster of PC's will therefore overload the building or UPS electrical supply system.  The JK Controls built-in power management solution handles this problem.

The Client has placed repeat orders for this solution to PC clustering, bringing the number of nodes well into three figures.  Each repeat has been for the latest advance in PC technology, demonstrating the flexibility of the JK Controls solution to cluster computing.

The modular design also allows small clusters to be built if required, for example an enclosure of 5 PCs will sit easily under a desk.