Intel said Thursday it will invest $ 700 million in its new research and development facility, which will design next-generation liquid cooling solutions and other data center-oriented technologies. In addition, the company introduced the industry’s first open source proprietary (open IP) liquid cooling solution with immersion and reference design, which allows data centers to start using immersion liquid cooling without investing in expensive custom solutions.
The first step toward democratizing liquid immersion cooling solutions began today when Intel introduced the industry’s first open IP reference design of an easy-to-implement and easily scalable full immersion liquid cooling solution. The reference design is evidence of a concept that will be completed in collaboration with Intel Taiwan and the Taiwanese ecosystem in a phased approach. Many OEM server manufacturers are located in Taiwan, so working closely with them will allow Intel to reach out to server vendors and server users.
But Intel doesn’t stop with a reference design. The company plans to create its new Oregon Research and Design Mega Lab on its Jones Farm campus, dedicated to immersion cooling, water efficiency and heat recovery and reuse. Construction of the new center will begin today and it will begin work in late 2023.
The new lab will ensure that future Intel data center products include Xeon, Optane, network interfaces, switching devices, Agilex FPGAs, Xe accelerators, Habana accelerators and other products under development and ready for immersion cooling. In essence, Intel wants ILC to be as widespread as traditional air and liquid cooling systems.
Modern Intel Xeon Scalable processors have a thermal design power of about 270 W per socket. In contrast, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing accelerators can consume up to 700 W of power per OAM or SXM5 socket. In addition, with a heat dissipation of about 6000 W per machine, air and liquid cooling lose their attractiveness in terms of cost and efficiency, as the energy consumed by today’s coolers represents 35% ~ 40% of the total energy consumption in the center for data, according to data from 2SRSi.
Intel believes that reusable liquid immersion cooling can reduce energy consumption from data center cooling systems and carbon emissions, making data centers cheaper to operate and reduce pollution from various power plants. But there is a problem with liquid immersion cooling (ILC) solutions: almost all ILC implementations use expensive proprietary hardware designs. To make liquid immersion cooling more accessible to the masses, Intel has been working with various ILC specialists over the past year or so.
“Intel’s commitment to global partnerships is evident in these reports today,” said Sandra L. Rivera, Intel’s executive vice president and general manager of Datacenter and AI Group. “The future of data center and data center design is based on innovative and sustainable technologies and practices, and I am proud of the work we do every day to help make a sustainable future a reality.”
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-invests-dollar700-million-in-immersion-liquid-cooling-solutions
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8964133/acastro_170731_1777_0006_v1.jpg "Two more executives are leaving Apple")
