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Most enterprise data centers have managed adequately with air cooling for CPUs and servers, but AI advancements are prompting IT departments to explore new cooling methods, including liquid cooling. With power demands for CPUs reaching 400 watts and GPUs up to 700 watts, air cooling no longer meets the needs of the extremely hot-running, power-intensive chips used in AI.
Currently, 22% of data centers are using liquid cooling, according to IDC figures. A decade of growth is anticipated, with Global Market Insights projecting the global data center liquid cooling market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 15% from 2023 to 2032. (See also: Pros and cons of air, liquid and geothermal cooling systems)
A new resource from Schneider Electric aims to help enterprises evaluate liquid cooling technologies and their applications in modern data centers, especially those handling high-density AI workloads.
Network World
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While Schneider Electric has a vested interest in liquid cooling, since it sells the equipment, it strove to be vendor- and product-neutral in its advice, said Robert Bunger, innovation product owner for the data center segment at Schneider Electric and a co-author of the publication, “Navigating Liquid Cooling Architectures for Data Centers with AI Workloads.”
Schneider Electric’s paper covers two types of liquid cooling: direct-to-chip, the overwhelming choice for those who have adopted liquid cooling; and immersion, which is still largely a fringe solution. Immersion cooling involves dunking very expensive electronics in a liquid bath, but it is a non-conductive liquid, so it’s safe to use with electronics.
The Schneider Electric paper addresses three main topics:
In addition, Schneider Electric details six common liquid cooling architectures, combining different CDU types and heat rejection methods, and it provides guidance on selecting the best option based on factors such as existing infrastructure, deployment size, speed, and energy efficiency.
Bunger said there is still a fear of leaks when companies consider liquid cooling, and it’s okay to have reasonable anxiety about that. “But I think people still kind of forget that there is water everywhere in the data center, with chilled water systems and everything like this. And this is just a little bit of an extension of that. So, you know, it’s not as scary as people think,” he said.
Migrating to liquid cooling is not something that is casually done and typically requires an experienced IT integrator, Bunger noted. “If it’s a first-time deployment for somebody doing liquid cooling, for sure, [I would recommend] to lean on the IT integrator,” he said.
