Re:Liquid cooling next-gen servers getting hands-on
by Nexxius on Monday August 02, 2021 @08:43PM
(#28044509)
A few years back IBM had a test line of liquid cooled modular components. Lovely things had everything connected & sealed and you could stack multiple identical components. Didn't go anywhere at the time but, the idea could be modified and re-implemented these days similar to your suggestions with great benefits.
Re:Liquid cooling next-gen servers getting hands-on
by meepmorp on Monday August 02, 2021 @05:22PM
(#28042836)
> How many fans are in a modern server rack? Liquid cooling could theoretically replace all of those with one moving part, one pump impeller.
Or maybe more than one impeller, because at least with the fans, cooling continues if there's a failure in one of them.
Re:Liquid cooling next-gen servers getting hands-on
by sandworm101 on Monday August 02, 2021 @06:46PM
(#28043661)
Well, perhaps coolant would be delivered to racks at a particular psi/volume just as electricity is today provided at a particular voltage and current. Then an entire datacenter would be served by a handful of massive pumps. Server racks might then have no moving parts, which couldn't harm reliability.
Because liquid cooling is only a marginal benefit for current hardware, hardware designed to be air cooled. If liquid cooling becomes a norm we should start seeing hardware designed with the expectation of liquid cooling. That could mean greater component density and greater power concentration --> greater speeds. One wonders what CPUs would be like if they were designed with the expectation of liquid cooling, water within a millimetre from the heat source rather than the metal heat spreaders that currently top most chips.
How many fans are in a modern server rack? Liquid cooling could theoretically replace all of those with one moving part, one pump impeller.