Next week, Iceotope will announce that it has developed, patented and manufactured an extreme IT equipment cooling solution.  The solution tackles the problems of cooling servers in data centres all the way from the actual source of the heat – at the processor and memory component level – to its final destination – outside air by using a 100% liquid path, some 4000 times more efficient than air.

The system operates at an amazing PUE of just over 1 and can operate almost everywhere on the planet without refrigeration. It is silent, reliable and can house the very highest performance systems with the highest power parts at extreme density. If you plan to visit Supercomputing next week in Portland Oregon you can see the product on Booth 2355.

There are more pictures and further information on Liquid Cooled Blades

The heat produced by the components inside each server is captured effectively by immersing the server motherboards in individually sealed baths of an inert synthetic liquid coolant. With the heat now locked in to a liquid, subsequent stages of liquid (water) cooling can be implemented to efficiently transport the heat from source to final destination in the air outside the data centre as shown below.

“End to end liquid cooling” thermal path

This approach entirely eliminates air in the heat transfer path between server components and the air outside the data centre. Water is already used for heat transport in many data centre facilities, although usually outside of the main server room, as it is around 3500x better than air in this role. The Iceotope solution, as shown in the technology demonstration video above, couples building-level water circuits (which may be pre-existing or newly installed) directly to safe, efficient and low pressure rack-level liquid cooling.

Because of the greater thermal efficiency of this “end to end liquid” cooling path, the building water circuit can be run much warmer – potentially eliminating the need for chiller plant and enabling year-round free cooling. With this approach, the 3 year cooling cost of a 1 megawatt data centre could be reduced from around $788,400 to around $52,560; a 93% ($735,840) reduction compared to air cooling. By enabling servers to be packed more tightly without compromising the cooling efficiency, the same approach could reduce the space required for the servers by 84%.

Liquid cooling is not new, many manufacturers used the process in the early days of computing including IBM and Cray Research. Today liquid cooled doors and cold plates are common on high density computer systems. Iceotope have developed a complete solution that overcomes the 21st Century Data Centre problem – what do we do with the heat?

Now the problem will be – what do we do with the data centre? Game changing.

Here is the Iceotope launch message:

Iceotope specialises in liquid cooling for high efficiency, high density server computers.

Iceotope has developed the first truly scalable, modular liquid cooling solution for modern rack-based server architectures.

Using this technology, Iceotope and its licensed partners produce servers that are highly suited for deployment in enterprise data centres, high performance computing (HPC) facilities and cloud computing infrastructure.

Iceotope-enabled servers:

• Reduce facility operating costs (i.e. reduced PUE) and associated carbon output.
• Enable greater compute capacity within a given electricity budget.
• Enable greater use of existing facility space through greater server/rack density.
• Can be deployed in non-traditional locations, freed from the constraints of air cooling.
• Deliver whole-life TCO benefits compared to air-cooled systems and alternative means of liquid cooling.
• Can be deployed in retro-fit or new-build sites.

Iceotope will be announcing more details about the technology and demonstrating systems at Supercomputing 2009 on Booth 2355. Supercomputing is held between November 14th and 20th in Portland Oregon.