What Is Immersion Cooling?

If your company uses cloud technology, it's supported by hundreds, if not thousands, of servers in a data center. Together, they produce a lot of heat that requires an intensive cooling solution to keep them functioning optimally. Equipment failures and system shutdowns can lower the life of powerful processors. 

Solutions like fans and heat sinks (components that disperse heat away from mechanical and electronic devices) are less efficient when it comes to absorbing and transferring heat. Immersion cooling offers advantages over these traditional cooling methods that have caused this solution to grow in popularity. 

What Is Immersion Cooling Used For?

Immersion cooling prevents electronic components from overheating by submerging servers in a nonconductive fluid. This method allows for direct heat dissipation, which improves cooling efficiency. Immersion cooling also reduces the need to invest in air-cooling systems. 

You often see immersion cooling used in places like:

• Data centers: Manages heat generated by large numbers of graphic processing units (GPUs) and servers. 
• High-performance computing (HPC) systems: Supercomputers and other HPC systems generate a lot of heat. Immersion cooling helps them maintain optimal temperatures and avoid overheating. 
• Cryptocurrency mining: Mining operations require a lot of computational power. Owners can lower costs by investing in immersion cooling vs. air-cooling systems. 
• Edge computing: Immersion computer cooling works well in remote locations or environments, such as harsh climates or industrial settings, that make traditional cooling methods difficult. 

Benefits of Immersion Cooling

Let's look at why immersion cooling is gaining popularity in many computing environments. 

Energy Efficiency

Air-cooling methods rely on air conditioning and HVAC systems to keep the temperature at optimal levels, which consumes much energy. The liquid used with immersion cooling absorbs heat directly, eliminating the need to invest in energy-heavy systems. 

Immersion cooling also generates a lower power usage effectiveness (PUE) metric, which measures total energy consumed and energy used by computers. Because the process doesn't rely on air, it's possible to stack components more closely together, allowing for greater use of physical space in an immersion cooling data center. 

Water Conservation

Data centers that rely on air cooling systems require towers designed to evaporate water, which can consume millions of gallons of water per year. In contrast, using dielectric fluids for data center immersion cooling systems eliminates the need for water towers and reduces overall water consumption. 

Reduced Noise Levels

The fans in air-cooling systems operate at high speeds, generating a lot of noise. Air movement among server racks also increases noise levels. Immersion systems and immersion-cooled racks do not need fans or additional air movement, eliminating much of the noise. 

Support for AI

AI workloads require parallel processing on multiple machines, which generates a lot of heat generation. Immersion cooling allows AI hardware to run for extended periods without throttling, a mechanism used to reduce clock speed when the temperature in a system gets too high. 

How Does Immersion Cooling Work?

While we've discussed the different elements used with immersion cooling systems, it's time to examine how the entire process works. 

The Process of Immersion Cooling

Immersion cooling involves submerging electronic components like server hardware, CPUs, and GPUs into dielectric fluid, which is thermally but not electrically conductive. Components can function normally when submerged because the liquid does not conduct electricity. 

Fluids absorb and transfer heat away from components much more efficiently than cooling fans. All components remain in contact with the cooling liquid, ensuring direct and uniform heat removal. That makes for faster cooling, which prevents equipment from being damaged and extends its lifespan. 

Types of Immersion Cooling

There are two different types of immersion cooling systems used to manage heat. 

Single-Phase Immersion Cooling

With single-phase immersion cooling, the dielectric fluid stays in a liquid state. After absorbing heat from components, the fluid releases heat by circulating through an external cooling system or heat exchanger. 

The exchanger transfers heat to a secondary medium (air or water) to dissipate heat from the system. After cooling, the dielectric fluid recirculates back into the tank to absorb more heat. 

Two-Phase Immersion Cooling

Two-phase immersion involves transforming the dielectric liquid into a gas after it reaches a specific temperature. The fluid starts boiling and evaporates as it absorbs heat. That vapor rises to the top of the tank, which contains a condenser or cooling coil. 

This component condenses the vapor to a liquid state that drips into the tank to absorb more heat. The condensation phase offers the advantage of removing large amounts of heat with minimal energy consumption. 

Dell and Intel's Role in Sustainable Immersion Cooling

One of the challenges companies face with incorporating immersion cooling is that it can sometimes be limiting to certain high-performance computing. Dell Technologies' sustainability efforts led to a team-up with Intel. The effort brought forth solutions designed to maximize the benefits of immersion cooling while creating a path to sustainability in the IT industry. 

Collaborative Innovations for Data Centers

Intel® Xeon® processors provide an average of 2.9x better performance per watt across different workloads. They also have more built-in accelerators than competitors' CPUs, delivering outsized performance when it comes to working with AI, databases, networking, and HPC workloads. As part of their commitment to innovation, Intel and Dell are also exploring sustainable computing solutions, such as immersion cooling, which significantly reduces energy consumption in data centers. Learn more about Intel and Dell's work on sustainable computing with immersion cooling.

Improving Energy Efficiency Through Design

Dell Technologies and Intel started by analyzing how heat moves and how it impacts liquid immersion cooling equipment used in data centers. A lot of heat requires a bigger difference in hot and cold temperatures. That means hotter processors require colder air in the area used to release heat. 

Generating the type of temperature difference needed requires refrigeration compressors that use up a lot of energy. Combining immersion cooling with the power and efficiency of Intel® Xeon® processors allows for more effective cooling. With Dell’s PowerEdge Smart Cooling features, including symmetric layout and streamlined flow paths for immersion liquid, systems can be cooled more effectively.

Starting on the Path to Sustainable Data Centers

Smart computing starts with finding hardware capable of delivering the power needed for cutting-edge technology with efficient cooling processes. Dell and Intel have created a line of computers to support data centers' needs for the long-term and work seamlessly with liquid cooling technologies to support a more sustainable future.