Open-source active cooling system for GPU and FPGA accelerator cards

An open-source, Arduino-based, programmable active cooling system for a GPU NVIDIA Tesla V100 and for a FGPA Xilinx Alveo U280 cards installed in standard computer cases.

Overview

Typically, high-performance Graphics Processing Units (GPU) and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) accelerators are high-power demanding elements, designed to be mounted in specialized, high-cost, racks with intense forced airflow systems to assure their functioning within proper thermal limits. We present here an open-source, Arduino-based, programmable active cooling system for GPU and FPGA cards that allow their installation in common computer cases. Only standard components and simple 3D-printed pieces are employed in our design. We built and have been continuously using this cooling system for a GPU NVIDIA Tesla V100 and an FPGA Xilinx Alveo U280, both mounted in common PCIe motherboards (ASUS PRIME Intel H510M-E), installed in a standard rack-mounted computer case and operating in an air-conditioned datacenter. The setup is inexpensive and has proved to be flexible and extremely reliable. Furthermore, it can be easily adapted for any other card or element requiring similar cooling.

For the rationale and overall description of the project, see the accompanying paper. For the full build instructions, see the hardware details. For the Arduino programming and electronics, see the controller details.

License

The hardware presented here is freely available under a CERN-OHL-S-2.0 license, which can be also found here.

The software and documentation are freely available under an MIT license, which can be also found here.

Contact

This project was carried out in the Institute of Mathematics, Statistics, and Scientific Computing of the University of Campinas, SP, Brazil. For further questions, please contact the developer Rodolfo Manin (rodolfo@ime.unicamp.br) or the Principal Investigator Alberto Saa (asaa@ime.unicamp.br).

Citation

R. Manin and A. Saa, Open-source active cooling system for GPU and FPGA accelerator cards (2002).

Funding

The work of A. Saa is supported by CNPq (grant 302674/2018-7) and FAPESP (grant 21/09293-7).

Dataset Metadata

property	value
name	Open-source active cooling system for GPU and FPGA accelerator cards
description	We present here an open-source, Arduino-based, programmable active cooling system for GPU and FPGA cards that allow their installation in common computer cases. Only standard components and simple 3D-printed pieces are employed in our design. We built and have been continuously using this cooling system for a GPU NVIDIA Tesla V100 and an FPGA Xilinx Alveo U280. The setup is inexpensive and has proved to be flexible and extremely reliable. Furthermore, it can be easily adapted for any other card or element requiring similar cooling.
url	https://github.com/albertosaa/ActiveCooling
sameAs	https://github.com/albertosaa/ActiveCooling
citation	R. Manin and A. Saa, Open-source active cooling system for GPU and FPGA accelerator cards (2002).
hw license	property value name CERN-OHL-S-2.0 url https://spdx.org/licenses/CERN-OHL-S-2.0.html
sw license	property value name MIT url https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
docs license	property value name MIT url https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT