Liquid cooling is at a pivotal point in its evolution as it moves out of its niche in high-performance computing (HPC) and into a growing number of data centers. This trend is being driven by the high-density racks required to support artificial intelligence (AI) and other latency-sensitive and processing-intensive business applications. With equipment racks supporting these applications now routinely exceeding 30 kW, engineers charged with ensuring thermal management are facing the limits of air as a heat-transfer medium.
Air-cooling systems have adapted to rising rack densities through increased system efficiency, moving cooling closer to the source of heat, and employing containment. But these approaches deliver diminishing returns and suffer reduced efficiency as rack densities rise above 30 kW.