Cundall Engineering Report Executive Summary

This report, from Cundall, introduces liquid cooling for data processing, with a focus on Iceotope's chassis-level precision immersion and Direct-to-Chip solutions.

Introduction to this white paper

The purpose of this report is to introduce liquid cooling for data-processing equipment, with a focus on the chassis-level precision immersion and Direct-to-Chip solutions produced by Iceotope Ltd. Different forms of liquid cooling are described and compared, as are other hybrid forms of liquid to air cooling.

The performance and energy efficiency advantages that liquid cooling can offer over conventional air-cooling are assessed, based around four imaginary Data Centres, all of which are based upon real world scenarios. Calculated PUE and WUE performance figures and predicted OPEX savings are presented, along with an indication of the environmental benefits, to illustrate the advantages that an operator would achieve through the adoption of liquid cooling.

The report predicts a strong, growing need for data centre capacity and highlights the challenge of providing cooling to these facilities in ways that minimise their carbon footprint. Several factors driving the adoption of liquid cooling are highlighted, including:

• Increasing CPU power and associated increases in power densities, both at a rack level and within the overall white space. 
• Emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other power-hungry applications. 
• Legislation, at local, national, and international levels.
• Increased adoption of Waste Heat Recovery (WHR), which is greatly facilitated by the use of liquid cooling.
• The need to reduce carbon footprint, particularly through a reduction in power and water consumption.
• Limited availability of large plots of development land for low-density, single storey data centres – recognising that the higher power density achievable with liquid cooling can reduce the overall footprint of the facility, especially if constructed in multi-storey. Heat rejection mayalso simplify, by virtue of the operating temperatures of the FWS, which for Classes W4 and W5, would be higher than those of the air and chilled water system typically deployed within an air-cooled facility.