Liquid cooled intelligent energy-saving data center solution

     The current technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence are driving the rapid development of the digital economy, which requires increasingly high hardware carriers of data information and data centers. With the continuous upgrading and iteration of server chips, the increasing demand for high-performance chips, and the increasing density of servers, the heat dissipation problem of servers has become one of the bottlenecks in the development of computer technology. Air cooling technology has been maturely applied in chip heat dissipation, and the noise and energy consumption problems caused by increasing wind speed to improve heat dissipation capacity are becoming increasingly serious. Due to the poor heat transfer performance of air as a cooling medium, and the fact that the specific heat of liquids is much greater than that of air, liquid cooling solutions have emerged to solve the problem of efficient cooling  in data centers.

     The vast majority of the electrical energy consumed by electronic information equipment in the data center during operation is converted into waste heat. If this part of the heat in the cabinet cannot be transferred to the surrounding environment in a timely manner, the operating temperature of chips and other components in the cabinet will rise sharply. For typical general-purpose computing servers, the CPU has the highest proportion of power consumption among various components, and the heat dissipation demand is also relatively high. When the chip temperature inside the server cabinet rises to above 80 ℃, it cannot guarantee the stable operation of the chip. Therefore, data centers need to continuously provide cooling capacity that matches the cooling needs of servers. Due to the fact that the data center cooling system and electronic information equipment under air-cooled cooling technology only achieve heat exchange through the air in the environment, the cooling system design and daily operation and maintenance of IT and air conditioning equipment can be easily achieved ,therefore, the vast majority of data centers still use air-cooled cooling technology to cool chips.

      Data center liquid cooling technology is a cooling method that uses flowing liquids to transfer the heat generated by internal components of a computer to the outside of the computer, ensuring that the computer operates within a safe temperature range. Liquid cooling technology is not a new technology, and various forms of liquid cooling applications have emerged since the 19th century, such as for insulation, cooling ultra-high voltage transformers, automotive cooling engines, etc. However, its large-scale deployment in enterprise level data centers is not common in terms of solutions and cases. At present, data center liquid cooling solutions are divided into contact liquid cooling technology and non-contact liquid cooling technology based on whether electronic information equipment and coolant are in direct contact. Contact liquid cooling technology is mainly divided into immersion and spray liquid cooling, while non-contact liquid cooling technology is mainly cold plate liquid cooling.

     For data centers, liquid cooling technology can achieve a relatively high inlet temperature of coolant (above 45 ℃), and the design of the cold source system in data centers can eliminate the need for chillers, allowing for the full year use of natural cooling sources nationwide. In most regions, data centers can achieve PUE as low as 1.15 or below. At the same time, the decrease in peak PUE in data centers has increased IT output, directly reducing data center TCO costs.
    In addition, with the continuous upgrading of liquid cooling technology and the deepening of the integration of different professional technologies, the energy-saving methods of data centers have shifted from simply improving the energy efficiency of air conditioning system equipment to jointly optimizing and regulating IT equipment and refrigeration equipment, further achieving the optimal energy efficiency across the entire data center through AI technology.

     With the rapid development of AI and other businesses, and facing the continuous energy-saving and consumption reduction requirements of data centers, considering the rapid iteration and upgrading of chip technology, the new green and intelligent data center technology not only needs to match the power requirements of future 2-3 generations of IT equipment, but also needs to consider the safety and reliability of large-scale deployment. As an innovative technology, data center liquid cooling technology can achieve the minimalist design and ultimate energy efficiency of data centers, while also catering to the future high-power trend of server chips. Against the background of strict low energy consumption requirements for data centers in national policies, it has received joint attention and support from both IT and data center sides.