GigaOM

IBM today announced a new supercomputer called Hydro-Cluster that uses water to cool down the device and reduce overall energy consumption. Call this a not-so-lean-yet-mean-green-machine. This system uses water-chilled copper plates above each of its microprocessors that continuously remove heat from the electronics, the company said in a press release, and claimed that it can cut data centers’ energy consumption by 40 precent. Up next? IBM says they are working on ways to allow water to go directly inside the chip. Once inside, the water can be routed out of the computer and pumped into the heating system for re-use.