They work 24/7 at high speeds and get searingly hot - but data centre computer chips get plenty of pampering. Some of them basically live at the spa.
We'll have fluid that comes up and [then] shower down, or trickle down, onto a component, says Jonathan Ballon, chief executive at liquid cooling firm Iceotope. Some things will get sprayed. In other cases, the industrious gizmos recline in circulating baths of fluid, which ferries away the heat they generate, enabling them to function at very high speeds, known as overclocking.
Without cooling, data centres fall over. In November, a cooling system failure at a data centre in the US sent financial trading tech offline at CME Group, the world's largest exchange operator. The company has since put in place additional cooling capacity to help protect against a repeat of this incident.
Currently, demand for data centres is booming, driven partly by the growth of AI technologies. But the huge amounts of energy and water that many of these facilities consume mean that they are increasingly controversial. More than 200 environmental groups in the US recently demanded a moratorium on new data centres in the country. But there are some data centre firms that say they want to reduce their impact.
Iceotope says its approach to liquid cooling may reduce cooling-related energy demands by up to 80%. Their technology uses water to cool down the oil-based fluid that interacts with computer tech, remaining in a closed loop, eliminating the need to draw more water from local supplies. However, some of these fluids are derived from fossil products.
In recent years, various companies have experimented with cooling systems. Microsoft sank a tube-like container full of servers into the sea off Orkney, which proved to be highly efficient but ultimately uneconomical.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that finding new ways to manage heat in data centres is crucial for sustainability and efficiency, especially amidst the burgeoning demand for AI-driven technologies.
