Qarnot plans on using CPUs to create literal space heaters

  

 

The Beauty of this design is that Qarnot has the opportunity to save money while delivering Q.Rad users with free heating, removing the need for large datacenters and the expensive cooling systems that are required to run them while also reducing net electricity use.    

Users of Q.Rads will be refunded the electricity costs that are incurred by the unit, resulting in free heating for the buildings use Q.Rads. These radiators will need to be connected to the internet, giving Qarnot a highly distributed cloud computing platform. 

Today’s Q.Rad units can come with either Intel i7 (4GHz) or AMD Ryzen 7 CPUs, with each 500W radiator solution coming with three compute units. 

These radiators are designed to be silent, utilising no fans to distribute heat into the surrounding space. Q.Rads will also ship with thermal, CO2, Humidity, Luminosity and pressure sensors, all of which can be read using the Qarnot Q.Rad app. 

  

 

Qarnot typically crunches data for 3D Rendering and other VFX workloads, with the company already heating 6 buildings in the Paris area for free. 

Right now the company has around 5,000 CPU cores in their cloud computing system and have plans to ship over 20,000 more cores within the next year. 

Below are the specifications of today’s Qarnot Q.Rad systems, which utilise wither Intel or Ryzen Pro 7 processors. 

  

 

This is a very innovative idea that works around the problems that are traditionally faced by datacenters, saving power by having a decentralised infrastructure and a system where the heat produced by systems can be used in a useful manner. 

Only time will tell how successful this approach will be in time, especially when it comes to upgrading existing Qarnot Radiator solutions and maintaining their decentralised infrastructure.  

 

You can join the discussion on Qarnot’s Q.Rad computing/heating systems on the OC3D Forums.