As the demand for better applications heats up, so do the CPUs that support them. After all, the greater the calculations performed, the greater the heat generated, which presents multiple challenges for data center operators.
The Changing Data Center Climate
While the world responds to environmental climate change, data center operators face a warming crisis. AI and other high-performance computing (HPC) applications drive chip makers to develop better-performing CPUs. However, this progress has come at a cost: heat.
Processors use electricity to store, compute, and transmit data. Therefore, the more compute load these processors require, the more electricity they use and the greater the heat they create. Traditionally, various data center cooling methods have sufficed to remove this excess heat, but now, efficiency demands have created a growing heat-dissipation challenge. In addition, the fans needed to air cool today's high-performance processors make for a challenging work environment.
The Five Challenges of Modern Data Center Cooling
Unfortunately, the capability of air to cool computing components has not kept pace with the heat they generate. Therefore, air-cooled systems are having to work harder and harder. Below are some modern challenges of data center cooling:
- Increased Performance Demands
Companies increasingly embrace power and space-hungry AI applications, from large legacy corporations to start-ups, as strategic differentiators and value delivery systems. As a result, they're pressuring their staff and vendors to deliver more and more processing to enable their latest applications.
- Increased Heat Production
At the same time, as chips process more data, they generate more heat, so much so that traditional air-cooling methods must work harder to push more air over components to keep them within safe temperature ranges.
- Rising Power Demands
Data centers consume more electricity to operate the required air circulation systems. Today's data centers devote as much as 30% of their power consumption to heat removal. At the same time, regulatory bodies in several parts of the world continue to limit the amount of power data centers can consume.
- Space Constraints
While some organizations are building newer, energy-efficient data centers (greenfield deployments), others must face cost and environmental constraints that hold them to existing facilities (brownfield deployments). In either case, most data center operators must keep a mindful eye on computing density or the amount of processing they can perform in relation to physical space. Often, this entails figuring out how to process more heat in the same amount of operating space.
- Environmental Hazards
Thanks to the rising cooling burden, data centers have become noisy workplaces. As CPU fans have multiplied and become more powerful, they've become louder—not yet to the level of a propeller aircraft, but significantly more audible than a house fan. As a result, the mission-critical work of data center support and maintenance staff must occur in environments that aren't conducive to concentration.
The Immersion Cooling Solution
While immersion cooling technology is not wholly new, the need for it is fresh on the minds of many operators of growing data centers. No longer can they focus solely on upgrading the performance of their equipment without taking into account heat dissipation or power consumption.
That's why when it comes time to upgrade, many data center leaders choose immersion cooling over traditional air-based methods. With immersion, the heat-generating components of the server are submerged in fluids that can dissipate heat more effectively and with higher efficiency than air. Systems no longer need fans and built-in heat sinks that draw more power and/or space. As a result, data centers can drastically reduce their power draw to cool components.
Further, servers cooled through immersion can be up to ten times denser than the air-cooled alternative, solving many data centers' space constraints as well as energy consumption requirements.
With the cooling cost significantly reduced, data center operators can upgrade to latter-generation CPUs capable of running AI and other modern apps without worry. And they can more easily satisfy the efficiency standards imposed internally or by governmental organizations.
Finally, all data center employees can benefit from a better work environment thanks to eliminating ever-louder cooling fans.
UNICOM Engineering - A Key Partner in Your Next Immersion Cooling Deployment
While the benefits of immersion-cooled servers may be apparent, an expert integration partner is the key to making them a reality. Multiple companies can resell the equipment of tier-one suppliers like Dell Technologies; however, only one company has been rated the Dell Technologies OEM Solutions NA Partner of the Year for four out of the last five years. UNICOM Engineering assists in the complex, customized deployments that ultimately influence the development of future Dell Technologies products. UNICOM Engineering is also a titanium-level Intel Technology Provider.
With multiple tenured experts on staff, UNICOM Engineering's capabilities extend far beyond equipment specifying and designing and building effective computing solutions to accommodate your data center's current and future needs.