Cooling the AI furnace

The current AI revolution is redefining the semiconductor industry and sending shock waves through the supply chains. But the ripples goes further than semiconductors.

There is a very valid discussion around the increasing power consumption of Datacenter’s and what kind of cost this has to society and the environment.

What is not discussed as much is the fact that power in equals power out. Electricity gets converted to heat and needs to be moved out of the datacenter efficiently or the datacenter will incinerate quickly. The datacenter needs an efficient cooling system.

Datacenter Cooling simplified

The traditional way of cooling is using air, as you know from your PC, using a heat sink on the processor and have a fan circulate air over it. Once the heat is removed from the processor, more traditional HVAC can take over.

This is still the most common way of cooling in the…