liquid hotter than a jacuzzi
For years, we’ve associated efficient data centers with cold rooms, hallways of frigid air, and roaring machines to keep servers under control. The expansion of artificial intelligence is forcing us to review that image. The next generation of infrastructure not only has to accommodate more powerful chips, it must also keep them running without power consumption growing at the same rate. In that scenario, NVIDIA opt for a counterintuitive solution: use a coolant at 45°Ca higher temperature than many hot tubs. The reason for this change is the scale that artificial intelligence is reaching. Data centers need to run more and more operations and concentrate more computing power in less space, increasing both electrical demand and the amount of heat their systems must manage. The company led by Jensen Huang explains that energy efficiency is not only about consuming less energy, but about completing more computational work for each kilowatt hour used. This metric has become one of the great challenges of digital infrastructure. The technical answer comes with Rubinthe generation of AI infrastructure that, according to NVIDIA, is the first to reach a 100% liquid cooling. This means that not only the accelerators or CPUs are liquid cooled, but all chips and network components in the system, within a closed loop. In that architecture the fans disappear and air is no longer the element that keeps the machine stable. Heat is captured much closer to where it is generated: on the surface of the components themselves. Here appears the most curious part of the approach: a hotter liquid can help use less energy. The reason is that, if the circuit works at 45°C, the system does not need to cool the refrigerant as much before returning it to the server. NVIDIA explains that this way the heat can be transferred to external circuits and dissipate with dry coolers, a kind of large radiators, reducing dependence on mechanical cooling. In a large-scale installation, that margin can translate into less electricity dedicated solely to removing heat from the building. This is how coolant flows in an AI factory: from the distribution unit to the servers Efficiency is not measured only in electricity. One of the most important promises of the closed circuit is to reduce the water used to keep the facility operational, because the liquid is not consumed in each cycle, but rather returns to the system. According to NVIDIA, designs based on dry refrigerators can bring this consumption close to zero in suitable locations, compared to traditional systems with cooling towers that can require about 9.8 million liters of water per megawatt per year. Added to this is another less visible effect: without fans or cold air corridors, the data center begins to be a physically different machine. The aerial pipes carry the refrigerant to the servers, one of the visible changes when the air stops being the protagonist For that model to work, it’s not enough to change the building’s cooling system: you also have to redesign the server inside. The company explains that previous liquid equipment was hybrid, with GPU and CPU cooled by cold plates, but with other components still dependent on air. At Rubin, its thermal engineering team redid the liquid path to take it to more elements of the board with a cleaner architecture, based on a single input and output. The visible result is clean, sealed fronts, where air-cooled servers typically have grills, and racks capable of concentrating more computing in less space. Geography is still a part of the calculation. A circuit capable of working at 45°C expands the margin for expelling heat to the outside, but does not turn all data centers into identical facilities. NVIDIA recognizes that climate makes a difference: designing a plant in a cold area is not the same as designing it in Phoenix, Arizona, where outdoor temperatures can require mechanical cooling systems to be activated. The promise, therefore, is not to always eliminate this equipment, but to greatly reduce the time in which it is needed. So if AI is going to require more and more computation, the industry has to find ways to cool its machines without making cooling even more of a problem. NVIDIA proposes to capture heat where it is bornmove it through a liquid circuit and raise the working temperature to reduce the stress on the system. The solution, at least in this approach, is not to chase more cold, but to stop fighting with the heat as before. Images | NVIDIA In Xataka | We had a lot of fun watching robot fights. Until we saw how one decapitated another with a kick