On August 27th, Caixin News reported that against the backdrop of the AI boom, billions of dollars in global data center investments have also led to a surge in electricity demand - in addition to the energy required to run Nvidia chips, there is also a significant amount of electricity needed to drive cooling systems to keep these chips working.
There is also a new business opportunity hidden here - by changing the way chips dissipate heat, the energy consumption of data centers can be directly reduced by half.
Not only does it save energy, but it also saves the area of the computer room
In a media report released on Tuesday, Tim Rosenfield, founder and CEO of SMC (Sustainable Metal Cloud) in Singapore, Nvidia's preferred partner for AI and cloud services, stated that the company's liquid cooled data centers can achieve installation costs 28% lower than their liquid cooled counterparts, and energy consumption can be reduced by up to 50% compared to traditional air-cooled technologies.
Specifically, SMC's approach is to immerse Nvidia chips in a synthetic oil called poly alpha olefin - oil that can absorb heat better than air and support tighter chip arrangements.
Traditionally, data centers have designed larger corridors for air circulation, and adopting liquid cooling technology allows for more servers to be packed into the same footprint.
Of course, this technology is facing multiple challenges, starting with the mindset of data center operators: it is too dangerous for liquids to enter the data center.
Rosenfeld stated that currently most data centers are not ready to accept any liquid, whether it is immersion or direct chip cooling. The market is finding the best way to adopt (liquid cooling) technology, and he also believes that there will be many methods in this field.
For SMC, the company's current solution is to containerize this set of "oil cooled" servers, allowing them to be deployed in any unused space within existing data centers.
According to previous media reports, SMC is seeking a $400 million equity financing and $550 million debt financing for data center expansion outside of Singapore.
Huang Renxun is also optimistic about liquid cooling
For liquid cooling technology, Huang Renxun, the boss of chip giant NVIDIA, also gave very high praise.
At the Taipei Computer Show in June, Huang Renxun and AMD CEO Liang Jianhou gave speeches on the same stage, vigorously promoting AMD's newly launched liquid cooled server cabinets.
Huang Renxun stated that liquid cooled cooling systems can significantly reduce the cost of data centers. If all newly built data centers use liquid cooling technology, the saved resources can naturally be invested in more computing power.
Liang Jianhou also introduced that the company's direct liquid cooling (DLC) solution has barely achieved a market share growth from 0% to 1% in the past 30 years, but it is now foreseeable that it will occupy 15% -30% of the market share in the next one to two years.