Computers fail if they get too hot, so power-hungry fans are used to cool them down. According to a study in 2023, servers in data centers take 30% to 40% of the total energy that data centers consume to keep them from overheating. Therefore, developers must find ways to keep computers cool efficiently.
Engineers have cooled supercomputers by circulating water in pipes near processors. Fluids are considered more efficient at drawing heat away from computers due to their properties, which are more dense than air. However, water cooling also faces problems of its own because heat converts water into a mist that evaporates into the atmosphere, wasting billions of liters of freshwater for cooling.
Recently, teams from different corners of the globe have shown that immersion cooling, or dunking whole data centers in oil could be the best way to keep them cool.
Singapore-based Sustainable Metal Cloud (SMC), an immersion-cooled data center company, has introduced its immersion-based cooling system, called HyperCubes. The fluid is forced slowly through the server, allowing for efficient heat transfer.
The system consists of 12 or 16 oil tanks, each containing a server. The servers are connected in between tanks by ordinary interconnects, looping out of the oil in one tank and into the next tank. The type of oil used is called polyalphaolefin, which is a commonly used automotive lubricant.
The SMC team also made modifications that need to be made to servers to make them compatible with this cooling method, such as removing the built-in fans or switching out thermal interface materials that connect chips to their heat sinks, which may degrade the oil. According to SMC, this approach can help to save 20% to 30% of total energy usage at the server level.
In addition, Sandia National Laboratories, in New Mexico is also another team that is testing immersion cooling. The liquid Sandia uses a synthetic, biodegradable, nontoxic, nonflammable, noncorrosive fluid made using food-grade components developed by Submer Technologies in Barcelona. In experiments, entire computers, including server racks and their power cables, are put in immersion tanks loaded with the fluid, aiming to capture all of the heat the electronics generate to provide cooling. The team claims that their system works 95% more efficiently compared with traditional cooling technologies.
Image & Article Credit: Sandia National Laboratories + Craig Fritz
