How liquid immersion cooling will unlock new industries

Australia hosts the Southern Hemisphere’s fastest supercomputers and has made considerable investments in high performance compute (HPC) infrastructure in recent years. While HPC influences all aspects of the Australian economy — according to the Department of Industry, Science and Resources — we are still considered a contributor to the global HPC community, rather than a world leader.

What will it take to make the next technological leap so we can confidently stand alongside those that have traditionally been at the forefront of HPC — countries like the United States, China, Japan, France and the United Kingdom?

To break through the next barrier, we need data centre cooling solutions that support the full capacity of our hardware. Immersion cooling has emerged as a promising solution that offers several benefits compared to traditional cooling methods.

What is immersion cooling?

Immersion cooling involves submerging hardware components such as HPC servers in a non-conductive liquid that acts as a coolant. This liquid transfers the heat generated by the components and carries it away from the hardware.

Unlike traditional cooling methods that rely on air to dissipate heat, immersion cooling is more than 1200 times more effective than air at transferring heat. This allows for higher cooling efficiency and significant energy savings as the coolant can operate at around 40°C and can operate with a condenser water loop and simple dry cooler.

Immersion cooling supports the new generation of CPUs and GPUs used in HPC servers with much higher power densities. Traditional cooling methods require large amounts of space for cooling systems such as CRAC units, raised floors, chillers and supporting infrastructure. Because of the much-improved data centre energy efficiency, supporting equipment including switchboards and generators can also be significantly smaller. This is particularly important for data centres and other facilities where space is at a premium.

This means we can have more computing power in a smaller space operating at a higher intensity for a longer period.

The future of HPC

HPC systems require powerful processors, graphics cards and other components that generate a lot of heat. Traditional cooling methods are often unable to cope with the heat generated by HPC systems, limiting their performance. Immersion cooling, on the other hand, can efficiently cool these components, allowing them to operate at their full design potential without any throttling of components.

With recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) bringing the notion of neural networks and machine learning to the mainstream, it will come as no surprise that the hardware required to operate generative adversarial networks needs a superior cooling solution — the old fan-powered air cooling won’t cut it.

Given the growing pressure on government and industry to address climate impact, immersion cooling offers an elegant solution. Reducing energy consumption that would otherwise be used to constantly circulate air, can help lessen carbon emissions and mitigate the impact of climate change. It is also a cost-effective alternative — the average immersion cooling tank uses around 30% less energy than traditional methods.

Unlocking ‘cool’ opportunities

While immersion cooling is ideal for today’s technology, its potential to unlock the technology of tomorrow is even more exciting. Humanity’s greatest problems are being solved using HPC — the cutting edge of calculation and data analysis — with Australia at the centre of it all.

Using HPC, Australian researchers have done incredible work in genomics, mapping out the patterns and science behind cancer in the hope of reverse engineering a cure. We’ve taken great strides in climate science, with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology using HPC to improve weather forecasting simulations for a range of industries, including agriculture, aviation and emergency services.

Our fledgling space industry will rely on HPC to plot astrogation and orbital dynamics. Our research and science industries will use massive computing power to analyse and solve problems for everything from medicine and biology, to chemical engineering, through to urban planning and large-scale population modelling.

Australia is at the epicentre of this new technology adoption. The APAC region is set to be the world’s largest consumer of immersion cooling solutions and is expected to dominate the global high-density rack market, thanks to high R&D investment and a growing need for robust cloud computing across verticals.

Looking ahead

Immersion cooling is critical to fostering our nation’s research capabilities, as it unlocks the full potential of HPC, enables more compact and dense hardware configurations and facilitates development of new technologies and applications.

This represents a great opportunity for Australia, positioning us to stay at the forefront of development, to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges and to stay competitive in a rapidly changing world.

Image credit: iStock.com/ArtemisDiana