Nov 21, 2022 21:00:00

Since the next-generation GPU has entered the 700W area, ``water cooling'' and ``liquid cooling'' will attract attention instead of air cooling

Heat generation is a problem due to

the high performance of the GPU . At Supercomputing 2022 , held from November 13 to 18, 2022, water cooling and liquid cooling are attracting attention as computer cooling systems.

Liquid and immersion is the new cool at Supercomputing '22 • The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/19/liquid_cooling_sc22/

Even in general computers, CPUs with power consumption of 400W and GPUs with 700W are becoming popular, and heat management is becoming important. is also used, further heat management is required.

Therefore, it was common for Supercomputing 2022 to use a water cooling system or a liquid cooling system as a cooling system for high-performance computers. The Register 's Tobias Mann introduces the water cooling kit and liquid cooling kit exhibited at Supercomputing 2022.

Many of the cooling systems on display at Supercomputing 2022 were ' direct liquid cooling '. Direct liquid cooling is a method of cooling a CPU or GPU by passing a liquid coolant through rubber tubes.

By building CPU, GPU, memory, etc. for liquid cooling,

HPE 's computer is said to have succeeded in building eight CPUs of AMD's ' 4th generation EPYC ' in a relatively space-saving manner.

On the other hand, Lenovo announced ' Neptune ' that can remove about 80% to about 97% of the heat generated, it is possible to cool a pair of EPYC and four Nvidia GPU ' H100 Tensor Core GPU '. It is explained that there is

Another cooling system is introduced as ' immersion cooling '. Immersion cooling involves cooling computer components and parts by submerging them in non-conductive liquids such as synthetic oils or special refrigerants. A typical example of immersion cooling is Cray-2 . Immersion cooling can remove nearly 100% of the heat generated, but is more complex to maintain than air or direct liquid cooling.

In data centers, the adoption of liquid cooling is being promoted due to higher temperatures and power densities associated with functional improvements in CPUs and GPUs. Dell'Oro Group (PDF file) According to the report , spending on liquid and immersion cooling equipment is expected to reach about 150 billion yen by 2026.

In addition, due to rising energy prices and growing interest in sustainability, water and liquid cooling are attractive because the air conditioning required to keep data center systems at the optimum operating temperature is smaller than air cooling. It has been.