As data centers become larger and larger, deploying more and more dense racks, and demanding server loads, traditional air cooling technologies no longer meet the cooling requirements of data centers. In response to this phenomenon, several experts discussed the development of today’s data centers at the “2022 Data Center Liquid Cooling Technology Seminar” held recently.
“In terms of policy, market demands and technical maturity, it marks the entry of data centers into the liquid cooling era.”
This was said by Lv Tianwen, Secretary General of China Electronics Energy Conservation Technology Association, at the recent “2022 Data Center Liquid Cooling Technology Seminar” held on April 26.
▼Data Center
2022 Data Center Liquid Cooling Technology Seminar
At the seminar, some experts made it clear that with the increasing power consumption of mainstream chips in servers, today’s traditional air cooling is beginning to fail to meet the timely requirements of data center cooling.
“The traditional air-cooling method has been greatly restricted, and it is ready to be used as a cooling method for the new generation of data centers.” Yao Yong, vice president of Dawning Digital Innovation, expressed his thoughts.
It came to prominence in the 1980s, with some liquid-cooled base stations for communications equipment appearing in the 1990s. This technology mainly uses liquid instead of air as the cooling media, through the uninterrupted cycle to take away the heat of the heating components, so as to reduce the temperature of the server technology. At present, most of the large IT companies in China are also strengthening the development of this technology products.
Lv Tianwen also said in the seminar, “liquid cooling technology will not only meet the development needs of high density and low energy consumption in data centers, but will also drive innovation in various configurations and components within data centers, bringing a continuous optimization reform.” This shows his belief that liquid cooling technology will bring infinite possibilities to data center energy saving and consumption reduction.
Liquid Cooling Technology
According to the existing contact method between liquid cooling media and heat generation source, immersion cooling technology is divided into three types, which are cold plate type (indirect contact), spray type (direct contact), and immersion type (direct contact). Among them, immersion (direct contact) liquid cooling seems to be able to better meet the demand for energy saving and consumption reduction in data centers.
▼immersion liquid cooling
Lv Tianwen also believes that “industrial greening and intensive development have become an inevitable trend. Based on a number of technical advantages and development potential, immersion liquid cooling technology will usher in a period of opportunity for rapid development.”
Nowadays, the immersion liquid cooling technology has been popularized in Bitcoin mining machines. It can not only greatly reduce the operating noise of the server, but also effectively prolong the service life of the server. Through the waste heat recovery technology, the heat energy generated by the data center can be efficiently recovered and used for heating, supplying hot water, and obtaining heating income. Some models can be effectively overclocked by 40% in a liquid-cooled environment.
Immersion liquid cooling technology is like a rising star. In the future, I believe that it will be popularized and can be seen everywhere in major data centers as a product and equipment.
This content information comes from People’s cn.
