As sales heat up, IBM looks at keeping computers cool

• Cooling computer server farms takes a lot of energy, so the feds are looking for more efficiency
• Most data centers use a quarter of their total energy use for cooling
• The new technique sends cool water through pipes; the water heats up as it passes near microchips

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — At IBM Corp.'s plant here, the engineers and technicians have been rigging up big IBM servers with cooling systems that work on much the same principle as the radiator in your vehicle, all to keep the computers from running hot and heavy from hefty online and credit-card sales.

With holiday shopping, the swiping and online commerce drives those computers to run hot and heavy. You may have experienced delays lately when a merchant's system was sluggish because of computer or network overload.

At IBM Corp.'s plant here, the engineers and technicians are wrapping up a two-year project this week that the company did for the U.S. Department of Energy to invent new ways to cool down the computers.

As often happens with government-backed research, the fruits then roll out to the general business world. The techniques IBM engineered are available to buyers of all of Big Blue's server lines.

"With more than 33 million servers in the world, cooling the computers is an acute problem. Most data centers use 25% of their total energy to simply cool their machines," said Kristin Bryson, a spokeswoman for IBM.

The cooling system sends water through piping that runs near the semiconductor microchips to carry away the heat they generate. Many machines use air-cooling systems, but water is a more heavy-duty medium.

The online shopping world continues to grow. The National Retail Federation projects this season will hit $96 billion in online sales. Even after Christmas, commerce is busy with redemption of gift cards, exchanging of gifts and post-holiday bargain hunting.

IBM's research found that holiday shoppers turned this year's Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, into the biggest spending day ever with online sales growing more than 30% from a year earlier.

Growth was led by department stores, up 43% vs. 2011. Health and beauty sales increased 25%. Home goods gained almost 27%, and clothing rose 25%.

IBM found that more than 1 in 6 consumers used a mobile device to visit a retailer's site. That was a jump of more than 70% from 2011.

But social networks weren't generating a big share of commerce. IBM found referrals from social networks generated less than half a percent of all online sales on Cyber Monday, down more than 26% from 2011.