Liquid cooling in data centers is becoming more of a necessity rather than an option thanks to the super-hot chips used to power AI. The two latest players to bow to the inevitability of liquid cooling: Amazon Web Services and Equinix.
In the case of Equinix, the largest independent cloud services and colocation hosting provider in the world, it deployed a two-phase, direct-to-chip cooling system from Accelsius, which specializes in liquid cooling systems.
Equinix will deploy the NeuCool IR80 system will be in Q3 2025 at Equinix’s Co-Innovation Facility (CIF) in the DC15 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center at the Equinix Ashburn Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. This dedicated facility provides a platform for Equinix to work with companies that are developing innovative technologies, helping customers see and experience these solutions in action.
“This kind of collaboration is a powerful way to demonstrate our technology in real-world scenarios,” said Josh Claman, CEO of Accelsius in a statement. “The key thing we’re finding with all the customers we’re talking to is making it tangible to them—helping them see it and visualize how it’s going to work for them. It’s one thing to talk about technology and capabilities in the abstract, but this shows it in real time.”
Accelsius’ offering allows for slightly warmer water temperatures than other technologies. The company reasons that the chips can handle a 6–8-degree Celsius increase in temperature without undue harm and running with slightly warmer water means significant savings from energy-intensive compressors.
The partnership was brought about by their shared participation in ARPA-E’s COOLERCHIPS program, a federal government-initiated program launched in 2023 that aims to reduce total cooling energy use to below 5% of a data center’s IT load.
With AWS, it deployed In-Row Heat Exchangers (IRHX), a custom-built liquid cooling system designed specifically for servers using Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs, it’s most powerful but also its hottest running processors used for AI training and inference.
The IRHX unit has three components: a water‑distribution cabinet, an integrated pumping unit, and in‑row fan‑coil modules. It uses direct to chip liquid cooling just like the equinox servers, where cold‑plates attached to the chip draw heat from the chips and is cooled by the liquid. The warmed coolant then flows through the coils of heat exchangers, where high‑speed fans Blow on the pipes to cool them, like a car radiator.
This type of cooling is nothing new, and there are a few direct to chip liquid cooling solutions on the market from Vertiv, CoolIT, Motivair, and Delta Electronics all sell liquid cooling options.
But AWS separates the pumping unit from the fan-coil modules, letting a single pumping system to support large number of fan units. These modular fans can be added or removed as cooling requirements evolve, giving AWS the flexibility to adjust the system per row and site.
This led to some concern that Amazon would disrupt the market for liquid cooling, but as a Dell’Oro Group analyst put it, Amazon develops custom technologies for itself and does not go into competition or business with other data center infrastructure companies.
Source:: Network World