Intel and Submer Advance Data Center Cooling Tech

The collaboration will establish a more sustainable and cutting-edge cooling protocol for the entire industry.

What’s New: Today, Intel and Submer announced a collaboration to co-develop the Precision Immersion Cooling Fluid Cloud for use in next-generation data centers. Intel and Submer are using Intel Xeon-based immersion-optimized server boards and Submer’s precision cooling technique to demonstrate the reuse of high-grade waste heat generated by compute elements in data centers. Intel and Submer’s collaboration will help accelerate industry standards for the adoption of immersion cooling.

"Recent innovations in immersion cooling techniques are helping to significantly improve the energy efficiency of data centers and enable organizations to address their sustainability goals. Our collaboration with Submer will allow us to address all stages of the immersion cooling value chain and offer a sustainable solution that will make a difference for our mutual customers."

–Mohan Kumar, Intel Fellow in the Datacenter and AI Group

Why it Matters: Data center managers are increasingly looking for ways to implement greener and more sustainable designs. By adopting immersion cooling techniques, data center managers can help ensure their infrastructure is able to solve today’s challenges and power future use cases. Industrywide guidelines around best practices for the use of immersion technology are vital as use increases.

How It Works: Heat is considered a burden in current data center cooling implementations. It is removed and discarded, but with a process that impacts the environment and data center operating costs. The Precision Immersion Cooling Fluid Cloud concept uses liquid cooling to achieve the next level of efficiency and density, with the goal of reshaping the use of IT thermals by integrating a precision immersion cooling architecture within each node. This approach helps to ensure the generated high-grade heat can be easily reused, monetized or even leveraged to produce electricity while guaranteeing an optimal operating temperature for the processors and other components. This approach will eventually lead to eliminating cooling costs and unprecedented total cost of operations improvements, which convert today’s cooling burden into a benefit.

“By embarking together on a joint mission to reshape the way that the industry currently operates, we’re setting the foundations for server OEMs and operators to have a clear roadmap to transform the data center industry and achieve a significantly reduced operational footprint,” said Daniel Pope, co-founder and CEO of Submer.

About the Collaboration: In addition to the technological expertise Intel and Submer bring to this project, guidance from a consortium of industry leaders will help build a supply chain for scaling the technology to ensure data centers are equipped to deliver a new generation of sustainable infrastructure. As part of the collaboration, Intel will focus efforts on an open-standard offering that supports scalable data center deployments from cloud to edge and work with the industries that will deploy these solutions. Intel has experience building scalable ecosystems through its global partner network, which is crucial for ensuring systems are compatible with standard server materials and meet the needs of a global industry.

About Sustainability: Intel’s work with Submer builds on Intel’s RISE initiative and 2030 goals, which include the company’s role as a global leader in sustainability and addressing climate change with Intel technology.

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