Indeed Andrew Donoghue, 451 Research analyst, set the scene with the opening speaker session on the subject of liquid cooling technologies. Andrew was quick to point out the growing levels of interest in liquid cooling and the main reasons behind this trend, one of which being that data centre operators are under greater pressure than ever to run their facilities more efficiently and cost effectively, with reliability no longer the main driver of technology decisions.
However, this was a promising yet grounded outlook for the future of liquid cooling, with Andrew pointing to that fact that air, as the data centre cooling incumbent, is still the biggest obstacle facing liquid cooling vendors – as opposed to their liquid cooling competitors. He also made the point that, due to the conservative nature of the industry, the scale of most liquid cooling deployments is still somewhat limited (eg. smaller HPC facilities rather than hyperscale computing). However, this is something that could change as the market and product offerings of key vendors mature, and large scale data centre deployments start to seriously consider liquid cooling alternatives.
Next up was Dr Jon Summers from the University of Leeds – a man who knows a thing or two about liquid cooling deployments, having tested direct, indirect and total liquid cooling solutions alongside his team at Leeds. If you were wondering, the term total liquid cooling (TLC) encompasses any liquid cooling technique that has entirely removed the use of fans/air in the cooling process and includes Iceotope’s technology. Andrew and Jon both made the point that these kind of set ups radically transform the data centre in terms of design, appearance and functionality.
Jon also spoke about his research in energy efficiency and exergy (heat recovery) and provided an eye opening account of the data centre market and digital economy in general. Jon suggested that computing is set to overtake the aviation industry in terms of energy use and produce as much as four percent of the world’s greenhouse gasses by 2020. However, he also made the extremely valid point that these carbon emissions aren’t just being made by IT, they are also being offset by IT. For example, as employees use video conferencing tools, this obviously amounts to increased IT use but it also offsets the potential environmental impact of that employee driving or flying in for an in-person meeting.
This talk provided the perfect backdrop for some of Iceotope’s biggest USPs, namely that liquid is simply much more efficient at cooling than air, and that liquid cooled facilities are able to give back to the environment. In PetaGen, this comes in the form of heat recovery, with local buildings able to make use of the waste heat from the cooling process via central heating systems. This kind of set up is markedly different to the typical data centre facility, which is hugely wasteful in terms of the cooling process. Regarding efficiency, Jon explained that a typical air cooling system would use 55W of energy to remove 2kW of heat energy, whereas a liquid cooling system would do so for just 1W, testament to some of Iceotope’s more ambitious claims.
Indeed, although efficiency has long been the rallying cry for data centre liquid cooling, the session from Iceotope founder, Peter Hopton, also offered improved performance as an additional benefit from these technologies. In much the same way that hardcore gamers may overclock their PC rigs to improve performance and get an edge over their rivals, he suggests that the same principles can be applied to the data centre. Peter’s research has shown that, with PetaGen systems, data centre operators can continually run their processors in turbo mode and deliver extra compute power and performance – which is particularly useful in HPC deployments. With Iceotope’s natural convection process, overclocking means that the liquid coolant heats up more quickly and moves around the server blade at a higher speed. With air cooling, processors can’t run in turbo for extended periods of time without the risk of burning out and ultimately failing. This is certainly an interesting perk for data centre owners that may not have considered this idea before.
The event also provided a chance for Iceotope partners, such as industry heavyweights Intel and Schneider Electric, to discuss their ties to the company during the networking drinks. UK and Ireland channel server manager at Intel, Mark Laurence explained, “We’ve been working with Iceotope for a number of years now. We’re very interested in the focus on eco servers, on improving the total cost of ownership across Intel products and on coming up with innovative cooling solutions for our technologies. Intel and Iceotope will be partnering to go for some of the largest high performance opportunities in the world.”
Schneider Electric’s global director for data centre projects, Tony Day, continued, “Today was very interesting for us, as we are one of the sponsors of Iceotope and this technology. We believe that this is going to be a very important area in the future, and it certainly needs to be part of the solution set for everybody working in our industry.”
With PetaGen units on sale now, it’s yet to be seen whether Iceotope can match its grand plans with commercial success, but it’s certainly a company to follow closely in 2015.
