Liquid Cooling - Competition Increases: By Peter Judge

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Mar 21 2010)

1. 

   If one contender looks like a pioneerm and two begins to look like an industry, we can start to take liquid cooling more seriously in data centers. And what is especially interesting is the fact that the two companies we're aware of so far in the field take radically different approaches, and are prepared to justify their technology choices. 

   A few months ago we heard about a liquid cooling system from UK company Iceotope, launched at the SC09 show in November. At the same show, another company called Green Revolution Cooling (GRC) demonstrated a system at a slightly earlier stage of development - which is now emerging into real world trials. 

   Liquid cooling, as you know, has been a high-end option for some time, particularly on supercomputers, but is widely tipped to be much more widely used on servers. IBM has predicted that all servers will be liquid cooled within ten years. 

   Iceotope builds extra cooling infrastructure into a chassis, so that each blade is a sealed unit holding a cooling fluid which doesn't conduct electricity, and water circulates to remove the heat from that unit. You end up with something the size and shape of a normal data center chassis, but with virtually no need for air cooling  

   GRC does something more radical, which in some ways sounds pleasingly simple. It lays the chassis on its back in a waterproof container, effectively a bath of coolant. the blades can be slotted in vertically. No need for the extra cooling loop, and no need to alter the blades, apparently - these are standard blades, GRC's co-president Mark Tlapak has assured me. 

   Both these systems have to overcome a user's natural doubts about servicing upgrades and replacements. Iceotope says its blades can be disconnected from the water loop and opened up, and then the coolant is drained away for servicing, while GRC says it's much simpler than that - a video on their site shows a technician simply pulling a blade out of the chassis, letting the liquid drain off and going to work on it. 

   
   Iceotope says its system is better developed, but GRC says its technology by its simplicity, actually does more. The GRC system also immerses the network and power supply parts of the system. 
   
   

   It's basically a face-off between something which says its simple, and something which prides itself on its engineering. Both companies are sure of themselves, and ready to damn their opponents with faint praise. Iceotope is “beautiful but costly”, says GRC's Tlapak, while  Iceotope's Peter Hopton dismisses GRC as a "fishtank manufacturer".

   
   In amongst all the other issues they are arguing about, one interesting thing came up, and that is storage. Hard disks are sealed units, but may not be entirely water-tight - I'm not sure I'd be happy to immerse them. However, as we noted last week, solid state drives are starting to come into their own, and they would be perfectlly happy working in a bath of dielectric coolant. Liquid cooling could actually work together with the move to solid state storage. 
   
   

   Bookmark or Share this article

Login to comment.