Intel hopes to improve HPC efficiency with immersion liquid cooling
It was previously reported that Intel will invest $700 million in the design of next-generation immersion liquid cooling solutions and other technologies for data centers and plans to launch the industry’s first open intellectual property immersion liquid cooling solution and public version design so that more data centers use immersion liquid cooling. At the same time, there is no need to spend a lot of money to design custom solutions, which will greatly reduce costs and carbon emissions.
Recently, Intel and immersion liquid cooling manufacturer GRC cooperated to discuss the use of immersion liquid cooling technology in high-performance computing (HPC) environments, and also released a white paper. In Intel’s view, immersion liquid cooling technology will bring higher energy efficiency, smaller environmental impact, and higher computing density.
It is understood that the current global data centers consume about 1.5% to 2% of the world’s electricity. Although many people think that cryptocurrencies consume more electricity, it is actually only 0.12%, and the consumption is smaller than in the past due to the improvement in efficiency. Considering that new data centers have been built in recent years, that could rise to 13% in the next decade. What’s more troublesome is that 40% of the energy consumption of data centers is not used for actual computing, but for cooling, which is one of the reasons why the energy efficiency of data centers has not been improved in the past decade. With the increase of transistor density, the original air-cooled heat dissipation method is approaching its limit.
Immersion liquid cooling technology can indeed effectively improve heat dissipation efficiency, but not everything is perfect, such as requiring more professional installation and maintenance, which is why this technology has not been widely promoted. Intel and GRC plan to build a large laboratory of 18,580 square meters to further promote the research of immersion liquid cooling technology.
