Superconducting Technology Assessment - nitrd

Several companies have demonstrated the enclosures and shields for SCE circuits as prototypes or as products.
Although other rack-mounted designs can be envisioned for distributed systems, most of them shared certain common
characteristics. They:
■ Were single-rack or single-stage standalone systems.
■ Used a circularly symmetrical packaging approach.
■ Were about 20-100 cm in size.
Packaging information about non-U.S. applications is scarce. Although several sources, such as NEC, report on their
SCE circuit design and performance, they seldom report on their packaging approach. Furthermore, even if they
did, the test results may only be for laboratory configurations rather than industrially robust ones.
6.3.2 ENCLOSURES AND SHIELDS – READINESS
The design of enclosures and shielding for SCE systems is technically feasible and fairly well understood. However,
an experimental iteration of the design of larger applications (e.g., a petaflops-scale supercomputer where dimensions
are in the order of several meters) has never been completed.
6.3.3 ENCLOSURES AND SHIELDS – PROJECTIONS
6.3.4 ENCLOSURES AND SHIELDS – ISSUES AND CONCERNS
Due to the lack of a previous design at large scale (e.g., a functional teraflop SCE supercomputer), other potential
issues may be hidden and can only be discovered when such an engineering exercise takes place. The past funding
(commercial and government) for the development of such systems was in disconnected increments that pre
ented the accumulation of engineering know-how. Therefore, substantial learning and more development is needed
to insure a functional SCE-based supercomputer system.
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TABLE 6-4. PROJECTIONS FOR ENCLOSURES AND SHIELDING FOR SCE SYSTEMS
Type of enclosures
and shields
Year 2004 2006 2008 2010
Vacuum
Vacuum
and Magnetic
Vacuum
and Magnetic
Vacuum
and Magnetic
Penetrating leads 500 1,000 5,000 10,000