Dive Brief:
- Johnson Controls has expanded its data center thermal management portfolio with a coolant distribution unit platform that can scale from 500 kilowatts to 10 megawatts cooling capacity, the company said Sept. 8.
- The Silent-Aire Coolant Distribution Unit platform enables precision cooling of high-performance computing equipment, supporting successive generations of high-powered AI chips, according to the announcement.
- Data center owners and operators can deploy the units in server rack rows or in the “whitespace perimeter” of server rooms, providing “flexibility to support a wide range of liquid-cooling configurations and hybrid designs” in both “edge-based inference” facilities and larger, centralized “AI factories,” the company said.
Dive Insight:
The Silent-Aire CDU line is “a versatile alternative to traditional data center HVAC, specifically designed to support the cooling needs of high density compute,” according to Johnson Controls.
In-row deployments can scale from 500 kW to 1,050 kW, with whitespace perimeter configurations scalable to 10 MW. The data sheet for a 1-MW in-row configuration indicates 1,050 kW cooling capacity on a 21 kW power draw using a 25% propylene glycol coolant. The unit measures 84 inches high by 35 inches wide and 48 deep.
The scalability of the line appears to be a response to the rapidly advancing energy densities of high-performance computing racks. The estimated average rack density moved from 7 kW in 2021 to 12 kW in early 2024, with projections nearing 50 kW per rack for hyperscale facilities by 2027, according to AFCOM’s 2024 State of the Data Center report.
Jensen Huang, CEO of U.S. chip giant NVIDIA, said earlier this year that server rack densities could reach 600 kW by late 2027 and scale from there. NVIDIA’s cutting-edge GB200 chips consume 120 kW of power, marking a significant increase over previous generations.
The Silent-Aire CDU line joins a growing field of liquid cooling solutions from smaller companies like Vertiv, LiquidStack and Accelsius. These companies say their technology is more efficient than air cooling and necessary to support newer generations of AI chips.
Nordik Data Centers said in February that it would develop a state-of-the-art data center near Montreal with Accelsius to demonstrate the latter’s NeuCool-branded two-phase, direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology under real-world conditions.
At the time, Accelsius CEO Josh Claman told Facilities Dive that NeuCool could deliver up to 50% energy savings relative to air cooling. Johnson Controls made a similar claim in its Silent-Aire announcement this month, saying its cooling solutions — which include York chillers and M&M Carnot thermal management equipment — “can reduce non-IT energy consumption by more than 50% in most North American data center hubs.”
Silent-Aire is a collaboration with “leading ecosystem players in the hyperscale, colocation and semiconductor industry” that will reinforce Johnson Controls’ role as a data center cooling provider “from chip to chiller,” Vice President and General Manager for Data Center Solutions Austin Domenici said in a statement.
“We’ve engineered an innovative and scalable platform that meets the demands of next-generation AI training and inference hardware, delivering consistent performance and reinforcing our role as a strategic partner to data center professionals,” Domenici said.
Johnson Controls’ data center business has been a key driver of order and sales growth for the Wisconsin-based building solutions company, offsetting underperformance in its fire and security solutions division in the second quarter of 2025.
