| Project Detail |
Most data centers use compressor-based refrigeration air-cooling, which consumes 25-35% of total data center energy usage. In addition, data center air-cooling systems use evaporative cooling towers that consume water. Annually, U.S. data centers use roughly 2% of total U.S. electricity generation and consume 160 billion gallons of water, competing with community and agricultural needs.
Project Innovation + Advantages:
IBM will develop an energy-efficient two-phase cooling system for data center servers to significantly reduce energy and water usage. The system will improve data center energy efficiency over traditionally air-cooled data centers that consume 25-35% of the total data center energy usage. The proposed system will flow non-conductive, dielectric liquid coolant within a server by placing heat extracting cold plates in direct contact with high power components (CPUs, GPUs, etc.), reducing the thermal resistance between the chip and coolant and allowing above ambient coolant temperature. This can potentially reduce data center cooling energy usage by over 90% compared with compressor-based, air-cooled data centers and eliminate water usage.
Potential Impact:
IBM’s energy efficient two-phase cooling system could reduce cooling energy consumption and eliminate water usage for data centers. |
