the first batch of data center liquid cooling series industry standards led by China Academy of communications and communications will be officially implemented from April 1, 2022. Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, JD, Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co.Ltd(000977) , China Telecom Corporation Limited(601728) , China Mobile, etc. are all drafting units
Under the “double carbon” goal, as a major energy consumer, data center has become a general trend of high efficiency, energy conservation and green carbon reduction. In the traditional data center, the energy consumption of refrigeration system accounts for about 40% of the total energy consumption of the data center, which also makes refrigeration technology become the key object of major manufacturers. Among them, liquid cooling has become an important means of green energy-saving development of global data centers with its characteristics of energy saving, high efficiency and low consumption.
Liu Jun, vice president of Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co.Ltd(000977) and general manager of AI & HPC product line, believed that there is only one kind of cooling in future data center, called “liquid cooling”. “The time of this day may be fast or slow, but the final form is liquid cooling.”
Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co.Ltd(000977) all in liquid cooling
According to CCID consultant’s prediction, by 2025, the overall scale of China’s liquid cooling data center market is conservatively estimated at 128.32 billion yuan and optimistically estimated at 133.03 billion yuan.
A person in charge of the cloud data center told the SciDev board Daily: “compared with the traditional cooling method, the cooling effect of liquid cooling is better and more energy-saving. The pue (power efficiency) of our data center can be reduced to less than 1.09, and the energy consumption will be reduced by 10% because there is no need to use a fan.”
As the server manufacturer with the second largest market share in the world, Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co.Ltd(000977) ‘s strategy is “all in liquid cooling”, which has been deployed in large quantities in cold sector liquid cooling, heat pipe liquid cooling, immersion liquid cooling and other types of products.
At the recent ipf22 conference, Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co.Ltd(000977) Asia’s largest R & D and production base of liquid cooling data center, Tianchi, was unveiled for the first time. The annual production capacity of the base reached 100000 units, realizing the mass delivery of the whole cold sector liquid cooling cabinet for the first time in the industry. The pue of user data center can be reduced to less than 1.1, and the overall delivery cycle is within 5-7 days.
Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co.Ltd(000977) also jointly released the Tianshu (ors3000s) liquid cooled whole cabinet server with JD cloud on the same day. At present, the product has been deployed on a large scale in JD cloud data center, providing basic computing power guarantee for JD 618, double 11 and red envelope interaction of CCTV Spring Festival Gala in the year of the tiger.
As for the development prospect of liquid cooling, Liu Jun, vice president of Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co.Ltd(000977) and general manager of AI & HPC product line, told scidev.net that there is only one kind of cooling in the data center in the future, which is called “liquid cooling”.
“This is our view of the future. What is uncertain is that it will come in that year. It may be faster or slower, but the final form is liquid cooling. This is also the reason why Inspur chooses all in liquid cooling.”
Liu Jun further elaborated the inevitability of replacing air cooling with liquid cooling: from the perspective of technological development, more advanced process means to achieve higher performance with smaller area, which also means more power consumption. Only liquid cooling can solve this problem . Under the “double carbon” goal, we must also make the choice of green energy conservation in the face of the challenge of global warming and the common destiny of mankind.
Ali will gradually change the liquid cooling into the default configuration
In liquid cooling technology, in addition to cold sector liquid cooling, immersion liquid cooling is also the key exploration direction in the industry. In cold sector liquid cooling, the liquid does not come into direct contact with the equipment. Immersion liquid cooling immerses electronic devices directly in non-conductive liquid, provides high heat transfer coefficient through heat conduction, convection and liquid boiling on the device surface, reduces the chip surface temperature, and takes away the heat in the coolant by the external refrigeration system.
Open source Securities believes that the market space of liquid cooling data center is large. Medium electronic grade fluorinated liquid is still one of the most promising liquid coolants for electronic equipment because of its appropriate dielectric constant, specific heat capacity, stability, safety and good cooling effect.
Alicloud computing Renhe data center, located in Hangzhou, has deployed the world’s largest immersion liquid cooling server cluster. Its servers are immersed in special coolant. Pue approaches the theoretical limit value of 1.0, which can save 70 million kwh of electricity every year and keep all street lights around the West Lake on for 8 years; Guangdong Heyuan data center, with deep lake water refrigeration, will use 100% green and clean energy in 2022, becoming the first large-scale data center in Ali to achieve carbon neutrality.
The reporter of the science and Innovation Board daily learned from Ali that company plans to exchange all data centers with air cooling and liquid cooling in the next few years . That is, liquid cooling can be deployed in any area where air cooling is deployed. finally, alibaba will phase out the air cooling technology and turn the more energy-saving liquid cooling into the default configuration of the data center .
East West calculation brings strong demand for liquid cooling
Xiang Kun, an expert on whale platform and a special senior researcher of the information society of 100, believes that the East West computing project will expand the demand for liquid cooling data centers.
“Liquid cooling technology does not have high requirements for the environment. The western region has the characteristics of high altitude, and liquid cooling technology can reduce the requirements for the environment. Therefore, in the large-scale deployment of East digital West computing, the suppliers of liquid cooling technology have needs and opportunities.”
However, Xiang Kun told the reporter of science and Innovation Board daily that at present, the liquid cooling technology is not stable enough and lacks corresponding standards. At the same time, new problems may appear in large-scale application of liquid cooling, which need to be solved continuously
Some data center insiders also pointed out that for the existing data center, the transformation cost of liquid cooling is too high, which affects the larger-scale promotion. This is the direction that liquid cooling needs technical breakthrough 。 In addition, the application trend of submerged liquid cooling has not yet formed in the industry, and the construction of standards and ecology need to be further improved. It is generally pointed out that high temperature is still popular in a large data center, and high temperature is still used in a certain area. In contrast, indirect evaporative cooling is also a good choice .
In this regard, Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co.Ltd(000977) said that it was working with customers to explore liquid cooling standards, establish ecology, apply for more patents and take the lead in industrial development.
many people in the data center industry said that generally speaking, under the dual carbon goal, with the full start of “counting from the east to the west” and the vigorous development of digital economy, the future data center refrigeration reform will bring 10 billion or even 100 billion market demand
At present, among the listed companies in China, Shenzhen Envicool Technology Co.Ltd(002837) , Guangdong Shenling Environmental Systems Co.Ltd(301018) , Kehua Data Co.Ltd(002335) , Guangzhou Goaland Energy Conservation Tech Co.Ltd(300499) , Sanhe Tongfei Refrigeration Co.Ltd(300990) , etc. are involved in server liquid cooling products .
