added expense is the only “problem”. Capitalism doesnt care about the environment at all. If they can make an extra dollar killing the planet they will consider it their fi-douche-iary duty to do so.
This article fails to mention (I presume, after skimming it) that all these data centers aren’t using water because it is magically better suited for this job, it’s just cheap and abundant.
This “new cooling design” doesn’t mean shit when it doesn’t address the reason data centers are using so much water
They kinda do, they say that, because the coolant is so efficient at transferring energy, a data center will not need evaporative cooling.
It would be very interesting to know what the upper limit of air temperature would be.
They already don’t need evaporative cooling. They just don’t want to pay for closed loop systems because they’re more expensive than evaporative cooling.
The solution exists, it’s just not required so no one is paying to do it when they don’t have to.
Existing systems rely on air to pass heat to a radiator, which then relays heat to the ambient air outside. In order to keep temperatures inside the data centre at sane levels, the cooling water needs to be below ambient temperature, which can be done with either chillers or evaporative cooling. Running a chiller takes a lot of electricity to say the least.
By exchanging heat between the chip and the cooling water directly, it seems they’re claiming they can just have a heat exchanger with no chiller or evaporative cooling required. Which is probably true, it’s why over clocked gaming PCs are often water cooled.
Why a chiller? You don’t need to freeze the servers. If you just use a normal radiator you remove the compressor and just need a pump and a fan
This has to be the dumbest reply I’ve had in a while.
I said below ambient, not below freezing. You can only ever cool to ambient temperature with a radiator.
Yeah and a processor’s ideal temperature is 70°C… If the ambient temperature is above that, nevermind the server.
You’re a rude motherfucker btw
If the ambient temperature is 70c, that’s the least of your worries. There’s probably an electrical fire at that point.
Again, they’re not using water for its properties. Heat transfer efficiency is low on the list of priorities. Cost, both upfront and running, is the deciding factor
Surely you must realise heat transfer efficiency and cost are closely linked, right? You haven’t told us anything we don’t already know. Of course this is about saving money, that’s already obvious.
Who’s us? I didn’t struggle understanding what they said at all
I’m not sure what argument or point you’re trying to make here. Why do you think they’re using water, exactly? And surely you must realise how efficiency and cost are linked?
I don’t know how to be any clearer.
LOW COST > HIGH COST.
It’s money. The goal is to save as much money as possible. Businesses, corporations, contractors, investors. All the people making decisions are trying to save every bit of money possible.
Surely you realize heat transfer efficiency isn’t linked to the cost of water. Which doesn’t even show up on the balance sheet.
100 * 0 = 100000000 * 0
Do you genuinely think I didn’t know businesses want to save money? Why are you telling me this?
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
You seem to have a hard time understanding that water is used because it is cheaper than the alternatives which already exist. This new development won’t replace water while the water remains cheap.
Are you talking about evaporative cooling? Because this new system still very much uses water, in a closed loop.
And I’m aware water is cheap, it falls out of the sky.
After your previous comment, i thought that about you as well.
Why do people keep acting like a company wanting to save money is a revelation? It’s so blindingly obvious, there’s no need to tell everyone all the time?
Wow, they invented closed loop cooling.
I guess they will be completely blown away when they find out, that one can actually link data centers to distributed heating networks and thereby actually use the primary output of those premium priced electrical heating plants, instead of just wasting it and lots of water while doing so. Of course, for doing so one would have to properly plan those data centers and need more time developing them etc. And then it would take longer than this bubble might last so that is not an option.
I read a story of one datacenter years ago where their waste heat was heating the industrial complex around them. It was a nice change to see. Regulations around it would really help. Oh you want to do this? You need to reuse 80% of your waste heat to get approval, and have x% of power be renewable.
We know how do it, people just dont.
Industrial ecology. Like you said, it’s not new, just takes some effort.
They’re using water cooling directly on each component, swapping heat sinks for water blocks. It’s not a new idea, water cooled PCs have been doing it for a very long time, but never done at data centre scales as far as I know.
The world’s fastest computers have been using them for a very long time. Though not data center sized, they are usually 100+ racks.
I thought that water cooled server gpus have been around for a while now, maybe I am mistaken.
Given how long water cooling has been around, I’m certain that technology is nothing new. I remember Linus Tech Tips trying to do something similar, where they water cooled all the video editing PCs on one big system.
Doing it on the scale of a data center will be something new though.
This cooling tech sounds exactly like the radiator in my car.
However, radiators in your car are also effective due to a constant airflow over them as they are moving. Datacenters don’t move, so what will help that transfer?
My car has this ancient technology called a “fan” to move air over the radiator when its running but not moving.
Well, that’s pretty cutting edge, it’s only been used since the beginning of the last century.
Wait…do you think no air is pushed over the radiator without it moving? Clutch fans and electric fans run when you’re stuck in traffic or idling. They turn on or off when the tstat tells them to (minus clutch fans that run off the engines own power).
My point was more about forced airflow, whether it be the movement of the car (less use of energy, as you’re using the motion of the air to provide airflow) or if you’re sitting still you have those fans, which are a power draw. In the case of a DC, you’d always have to have a fan to do what a car does passively. So that increases, cost, energy use and complexity.
Most DC builders are avoiding closed loop systems already as they’re more expensive.
I see, I don’t understand why they’re not doing thermal cooling. Just a little below the surface the temp is like 50-55, cooling liquid down from that level is a lot easier than doing it from 100+ in a desert. Go closed loop then…and build these things in the middle of no where, where no one lives…then power them off solar and nuclear power…or just don’t build them because no one wants this shitty clippy 2.0 anyways.
Convection? Just install chimneys with the radiator at the base. That can even be coupled with fan driven generators. Fairly old tech too.
Being bigger. They don’t move so they can be huge.
It’s genuinely the same idea. It’s also something that has been done for many years in PCs, but not on the scale of a data center.
It sounds like genuinely cool technology in multiple ways. A water block on every single major component, and no cooling fans at all.
That would also be a very quiet room, rather than having thousands of tiny little fans screaming all the time.
The failure domain becomes everything below the box that leaks?
There’s nothing wrong with air cooling.
Did you miss the part about millions of dollars in energy savings per year?
Yeah so they literally always could have done this. They probably only started now because there was so much of a stink being kicked up about it
Still gonna be using tons of energy, so hit me up when they claim 100% reduction in energy and I’m interested.
Just cool with Cabernet Sauvignon, and you’re also saving lots of water.
If you set it up right you could capture some of the evaporated portions and turn it into brandy.
I’m actually kinda surprised that data centers aren’t repurposing the heat to evaporate lithium brine
Chat GPT’s replies seem drunk anyway.
Why don’t I believe this?
Maybe so. But it would cost money. And companies just don’t do that in America.
Huang rapes kids
Is it reduced 100% or 1200%?
