Rittal announces HPC direct chip cooling solution together with ZutaCore

It is forecast that the global market for liquid cooling in the data centre industry will increase from $1.2 billion (2019) to a 2024 figure of $3.2 billion (1). The main reasons for this are the growing demand for energy-efficient, compact cooling solutions and for lower operating costs, combined with higher performance capabilities – in applications ranging from edge to high-performance computing. This is where conventional solutions for rack and room cooling reach their limits. One answer is being provided by the new direct chip cooling solutions from Rittal and ZutaCore. The partners are backing the transformation of the data centre industry with an unprecedented cooling output of 900 W and more per server. On 12 May, the partners will be presenting their solutions to the public for the first time with an online live demo and a computer-generated booth at the OCP Virtual Summit.

Rittal, the world's leading systems supplier for industrial and IT infrastructure solutions, and ZutaCore, an expert in cooling processors and liquid cooling, are launching innovative solutions for high-performance cooling and other scenarios that require intense computer power under the name “Rittal HPC Cooled-by-ZutaCore”.

Scalable: cooling for 900 W and more

Drivers such as artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning are increasing the requirements for processor performance, density in the data centre and rack cooling. Partners Rittal and ZutaCore are now offering solutions in these fields with their pioneering direct chip cooling range of products. The new system works on the basis of evaporative cooling, using latent energy to evaporate refrigerant (“direct contact evaporative cooling”).

Users can prevent processors overheating locally because the system provides cooling exactly where hotspots occur. This reduces the risk of IT failures. Moreover, the system’s scalability allows customers’ systems to grow in a future-proof manner, in line with dynamic market requirements. Cooling outputs of 900 W per server and beyond are possible. This way, Rittal is consolidating its expertise in the field of IT cooling and expanding its comprehensive range of efficient and high-performance cooling systems for demanding requirements with high power densities.

High efficiency: Cooling solutions for edge computing and through to HPC

Initially, the companies are presenting two solutions: Firstly, a space-saving and compact, rear-door cooling solution. This comprises an air/refrigerant heat exchanger, designed as the rear door of the server enclosure from Rittal's LCP system range – combined with ZutaCore’s HyperCool technology for direct chip cooling.

The latter is based on the following principle: The liquid refrigerant flows into specially developed evaporators (“Enhanced Nucleation Evaporators”) of the server processors (CPU and GPU). By absorbing the heat from the processor, the refrigerant evaporates and becomes gaseous. In the heat exchanger, the refrigerant (Novec), which had previously turned to a gas, becomes liquid once more. The temperature of the air flowing through is enough to make this happen. A pump ensures that the liquid refrigerant then flows back into the cooling system. Major space savings are achieved as nearly all the cooling solution components are integrated in the rear door. This solution can be easily installed in data centres by means of “plug & play”, without any changes having to be made to the existing infrastructure.

The second solution from Rittal and ZutaCore is an in-rack solution, available in both air and water-cooled versions. The air-cooled solution supports up to 20 kW of heat dissipation per rack with the aid of an in-rack, air cooled condenser. It can be easily installed in any rack in practically any environment and is a response to the rapidly growing demand for cooling high-performance processors on the “edge”. The water-cooled in-rack version supports up to 20 kW of heat dissipation per rack with the aid of a water-cooled condenser. It has been designed primarily for fast growing processor and server performances.

“The mass adoption of direct liquid cooling in data centres becomes inevitable once we consider semiconductor trends, data centre economics and sustainability goals in the 2020s,” says Daniel Bizo, Principal Analyst at 451 Research. “Air cooling alone won’t be able to meet all requirements in future when mainstream server processors can generate more heat than an entire server a few years ago. Moreover, there is increasing cost pressure and high expectations, for example concerning environmental sustainability and low energy consumption. The data centre industry will have to keep pace with these demands,” Mr. Bizo says.

“Our solutions directly address the cooling requirements that hyperscale and colocation companies have. They eliminate the use of water within the server and they can be used where air cooling has reached its limits. This represents a significant added value for our customers,” says Luis Brücher, Vice President Product Management IT at Rittal.

“By partnering with Rittal, we can bring our direct-on-chip cooling solutions to the global market. We can now answer the demand we’ve already seen and scale it to provide this technology to some of the industry’s largest and most demanding data centre operators,” says Udi Paret, President, ZutaCore. “No matter whether in a hyperscaler, colocation provider or an enterprise environment – the ‘Rittal HPC Cooled-by-ZutaCore’ solutions combine the unique advantages of Rittal’s modular system solutions with innovative liquid cooling from ZutaCore to provide unprecedented heat dissipation,” Mr. Paret adds.

World premiere at the OCP Virtual Summit

On 12 May, Rittal and ZutaCore will be making public their ‘Rittal HPC Cooled-by-ZutaCore’ solutions for the first time at the OCP Virtual Summit. During a virtual live demonstration, participants will discover which joint range of solutions the partners are using in order to meet the future requirements for data centre cooling, regardless of whether the data centre is in a newly constructed building or a modernised one.

Interested parties can follow the Rittal and ZutaCore’s world premiere live and online at 21:30 CEST on 12 May: https://sched.co/bXRC

Further information will be available at the virtual trade fair booth from 12 May: https://bit.ly/virtual-booth-Rittal-ZutaCore

Participants must register here for the OCP Summit: https://www.opencompute.org/summit/global-summit/registration

This gives them access to the all presentations and booths. The OCP Summit takes place annually in San José in the Silicon Valley. This year, in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the Open Compute Project Foundation has, for the first time, devised a format with live online demos and virtual exhibition booths.

(1) Markets and Markets: Data Centre Liquid Cooling Market