Market Segment

Who needs an Athlon 800?

We should actually ask, "who wants an Athlon 800 system?" Okay, you all can put down your hands now. Everyone wants the fastest system possible, but how many of you can justify the cost? It's a given that the Athlon 800 will give gamers incredible performance, but there are other computer applications besides games.

In the business world, companies run engineering/3D software programs that cost thousands (or tens of thousands) more than the hardware itself. A company won't think twice about buying a $2000-$3000 workstation for an 100k engineer. Companies are willing to pay for increased productivity. Specialized high-end workstations often sell for 10k-20k. Companies may consider the KryoTech Cool Athlon 800 a steal.

Sever Stability?

The KryoTech system is also great for single processor server applications. We asked KryoTech's Scott Spears about stability risks involving the refrigeration unit:

FS: With servers, people put stability first and performance second. The KryoTech refrigeration unit is just another component that can possibly malfunction. Do you have a MTBF for the refrigeration unit?

Scott: We use components from a mature industry where failures are extremely rare. For example one of our compressor clients sells several million compressors each year and on average they get less than 100 back due to failures. A negligible amount. Also, we seal the system by brazing it so there are no leak points. There is no valve so coolant can not be accidentally released by the customer and as a consequence the cooling systems never, ever need recharging like your car or home AC system. In your car and house there are many quick release valves and other connections that are not brazed which leak minute amounts of coolant all of the time. This is why you have to re-charge periodically. We designed our system without valves and quick connects and totally brazed the whole circuit in order to remove the need for periodic re-charge. Basically our tests show that the MTBF on the chillers is about 10 years.

You are absolutely right about stability on servers and what we have found is that our system actually makes systems more stable. In theory this makes sense because we are operating the CMOS at a temperature that it is more comfortable in. Also, we bus the processor heat out of the case so all of the other components are extremely happy.

Scott sure convinced us that the KryoTech unit is stable. We also leaned that "KryoTech provides cooling sub-systems for the IBM System 390 Mainframe." That's the mainframe behind several mission critical services such as 911 call centers, air traffic control systems, and stock exchanges. KryoTech is good enough for Big Blue, and that's more than enough for us!