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> we attempted to install a medium size HPC cluster in a well-known commerical Datacenter and network provider. The commercial of the DS almost fall from his chair when we announced the power requirements.

Heh. We tried it too. They didn’t believe that a single node used their entire rack’s budget at first.

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I'm going through a similar thing. Next week our procurement is arriving, but most likely majority of the nodes will sit in a box for a while before they can figure out how to power them...

Also, this involves a UK university where it would takes forever to upgrade the power delivery to the building/floor/room. There's no planned upgrade whatsoever so people just need to make do with what we have.

Sounds fascinating. Can you give any more details? What kind of nodes are they and how they differ from "traditional" DC hardware, say from Supermicro?

The difference is GPUs. A normal dual socket system serving a database or webserver use under medium load around 200-300W, One of these [1] equipped with 10xA100 can easily use in the ballpark of 3kW under load. So we are talking 10x the power usage.

[1]https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/gpu/5u/sys-521...

Thanks, this makes sense!

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