Dive Brief:
- Two-phase, direct-to-chip liquid cooling company Accelsius today announced it is deploying its technology at the EdgeConnex Global Training Center, marking the first commercial deployment of its IR150 unit, the data center industry’s first fully integrated IT rack with a cooling distribution unit, the company says.
- EdgeConnex developed the global training center to standardize operational training for data centers, giving participants instruction in a production-like environment before they support customer deployments in the field, the companies said in a news release.
- Independent benchmarking commissioned by Accelsius found two-phase direct-to-chip cooling can deliver cooling with less energy. The EdgeConnex deployment signals that data center operators are seeing value in the technology, Accelsius CEO John Hewitt told Facilities Dive.
Dive Insight:
Direct-to-chip cooling uses cold plates placed directly over chips to capture heat, which is then transferred to the coolant circulating in a closed-loop system. Two-phase direct-to-chip cooling uses a dielectric refrigerant that boils into vapor and condenses back into liquid to move heat, compared with single-phase, which uses a continuously pumped fluid that stays in a liquid state.
The independent benchmarking, conducted by a third-party systems integrator, compared an NVIDIA B200 GPU server’s factory-installed, single-phase direct-to-chip cooling system with Accelsius’ NeuCool two-phase technology across approximately 40,000 operating points under simulated AI workloads. Accelsius didn’t identify the systems integrator that conducted the benchmarking.
The results found that single-phase performance at 45 degrees Celsius facility water can be matched by Accelsius with 54 degrees Celsius inlet water temperatures. Each degree increase in facility water temperature equates to approximately 4% in annual energy savings, Accelsius said in a news release.
As AI infrastructure expands into hotter climates and operators work to reduce energy consumption and local community impact, Accelsius says the ability to maintain GPU performance at higher facility temperatures is becoming a critical requirement for purpose-built AI facilities.
By enabling operations with facility water temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius, the company says, NeuCool allows for free cooling in most locations around the world for much of the year.
“If you’ve got a data center today that is built for single-phase, you’re [already] doing liquid cooling. You can drop our equipment in and generate much of the power usage benefits,” Hewitt said in an interview. “But you can also flip that data center, even with a chiller application, into a free cooling mode in most geographies, most days of the year.”
For most facility operators with a fixed power envelope, this means they now have the opportunity to either run more compute capacity with the same power or keep their compute capacity level with significantly less energy.
Another key benefit of Accelsius’ technology is that it is waterless, according to Hewitt.
“If you think about all the negative press the data center industry is getting right now, we get to play a part in fixing the water usage. We can completely eliminate that, except for toilets and faucets, and we get to significantly reduce the power burn or increase the compute, whichever your priority is,” he said.
Workforce requirements are also simplified, Hewitt said. Compared to normal liquid loops, which normally contain water and a 25% propylene glycol mix and must be filled and serviced, two-phase doesn’t require draining or refilling, making operations easier, he said.
And in the event of a leak, the industry is already very familiar with refrigerant leaks, he said.
“If you think about a data center operator’s footprint and the [operating staff] necessary, I would argue the capability is there, but their work just got a whole lot simpler,” Hewitt said. “Through the context of an operator … If I’m going to be preparing for the company for the longer team, I probably want to start learning about two-phase direct-to-chip.”
Accelsius says its commercial IR150 unit is “the industry’s first fully integrated IT rack plus CDU” and that its installation at EdgeConnex’s global training center marks the next milestone in its commercial rollout, following its market introduction at NVIDIA’s GTC event in March and general availability announcement at Data Center World in April.
By incorporating Accelsius’ NeuCool technology into its curriculum, the training facility will provide operators, technicians and ecosystem partners with hands-on experience deploying and servicing two-phase liquid cooling systems for AI workloads, according to the news release.
“EdgeConnex, as a data center operator, is … preparing for the future. To me, it’s a clear signal that the market is starting to prepare for adoption,” Hewitt said. “Nobody knows whether two-phase is going to hit mass adoption tomorrow or a few weeks after that. I can’t predict that, but what I can see is many signals happening in the marketplace.”
The deployment follows Accelsius’ $65 million series B in January, led by Johnson Controls and Legrand. Hewitt took over as CEO in March, succeeding Josh Claman, who has led the company since its inception and is assuming the role as executive chairman.
