Motivair Cool News

AI-led applications are growing at an unprecedented rate. While highly beneficial for a business, it’s forcing data center operators to rapidly pivot their infrastructure arsenal to keep up with the growing thermal demands at the chip level.

Modern processors are getting hotter, faster. Direct liquid cooling has emerged as a thermally effective solution for high-performance computing, leaving data centers to wonder how to bring water into an historically air-cooled environment?

Several major players – like Meta, or colocation data center provider Digital Realty – have started deploying rear door heat exchangers, utilizing air-assisted liquid cooling, with hopes of reducing facility-wide infrastructure investments.

HOW DOES AIR-ASSISTED LIQUID COOLING WORK?
RDHx’s can operate in two different environments, air cooling a server or deploying direct liquid cooling.

Air Cooling: Cool facility water is pumped through the RDHx while room air is pulled into the cabinet via fans, collecting heat as it passes through the servers towards a heat exchanger. The heat is transferred to the coolant inside the heat exchanger and sent out to the facility’s chilled water source. Cool air is exhausted back to the room at a predetermined set point ensuring room neutral cooling and 100% of heat going to liquid.

Air-Assisted Liquid Cooling: Data centers can use RDHxs in conjunction with direct liquid cooled (DLC) servers. When coupled with floor mount or in-rack Coolant Distribution Units and In-Rack Manifolds, an RDHx functions as a part of a custom water-cooled loop, cooling the entire rack. Coolant is safely and reliably pumped through the chip to the heat exchanger and back to the CDU. All heat from the rack is extracted into liquid and returned to the facility’s chilled water source.

MOTIVAIR’S CHILLEDDOOR®
Motivair ChilledDoor® Rack Cooling System is an active rear door heat exchanger, mounted directly to the back of any standard server rack.

• 0-75kW cooling capacity with 100% Heat Removal.
• Designed to fit any industry standard server rack – Open19 and OCP compliant.

Designed for and used by the world’s preeminent enterprise data center and supercomputer owners and operators, the ChilledDoor allows for on-demand cooling on a per rack, row or room level ensuring optimal computer performance and maximum uptime.

While some data centers may not be ready for liquid cooling, AI applications appear to be pushing data centers closer to that technological shift. Motivair’s ChilledDoor offers greater flexibility, allowing data center deployments in facilities with or without the plumbing required to support rack-level liquid cooling.