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Comment by vmh1928 | Hacker News Reader

vmh1928

I'm going with Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce as giants who's shoulders we stand on. A particular generation of chip is just one stepping stone of the many along the way.

https://www.keranews.org/health-science-tech/2014-09-12/on-t...

Also, a quibble, it's Halon not Argon. Nobody sprays water around a room full of burning electrical equipment.

Halon is no longer being manufactured for greenhouse reasons (afaik.) Alternatives being worked on: https://www.firetrace.com/fire-protection-blog/why-is-halon-...

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> Also, a quibble, it's Halon not Argon. Nobody sprays water around a room full of burning electrical equipment.

But... Argon isn't water? What do you mean? Argon is also used for fire extinguishing in datacenters, according to wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Argon.jpg

I think he's saying that datacenters would not have water sprinklers and would instead use Halon fire extinguishers.

He's wrong and you/Wikipedia are right, BTW. Halons were banned in 1994, before datacenters became commonplace. Argon and other inert gas fire suppression systems (of which Halon is one, but a banned one) are used instead.

Halon used to be the standard for data centers using gaseous fire extinguishers in the mainframe era. See: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/D/dinosaur-pen.html

The op's a bit outdated, but not completely wrong. Even now a lot of data centers use various halon replacements rather than Argonite, though there are a number of different gaseous fire suppressants used in data centers these days.

> Halons were banned in 1994, before datacenters became commonplace.

The 90s called and would like a word with you.

when that call is over, the 60's, 70's, and 80's are on hold.

The last data centre I worked in certainly had water sprinklers too.

The gaseous system was one-shot. If the fire continues or restarted, or another fire occurred before the system was recharged, water sprinklers would save the building.

Redundant systems. Of course, some data centres probably have redundant gaseous suppression too.

> Halons were banned in 1994, before datacenters became commonplace.

The article is talking about 1971, long before Halon was banned. It was commonplace to find Halon installations in computer rooms in the 1980s.

If I recall correctly Halons (bromomethanes) are ozone depleting, though they may also been a greenhouse gas I’m not sure.

The last data centre I worked in had an FM200 liquified has fire suppression system, that’s 1,1,1,2,3,3,3-Heptafluoropropane - so probably still a greenhouse gas to some extent due to the propane, but wouldn’t be a significant concern given they’re not routinely discharged.

It's being outserviced for the reasons you mention, although you can still replace bottles in existing systems with gas from the used market.

My bad, apparently argon is also used as a fire suppressant.

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