Holistic Co-Design of Novel Hybrid Cooling Technology for the Data Center of the Future

We are working on the holistic development of a novel hybrid cooling technology to address the growing need for advanced thermal management solutions and energy efficiency for data centers for applications such as AI. At the server level we are working on the development of: (1) direct-to-chip evaporative cooling (DCEC), (Figure 1E) enabling significant reduction of chip-to-coolant thermal resistance down to 210kW per rack and PUE of 126 kW per rack and PUE of <1.05 enabling A3 class servers (up to 40°C inlet). Also, at IIT, a robust neural network model based on validated physics-based calculations will enable control and co-design of the proposed cooling technologies at the module, server, and rack level. This project is executed in collaboration with the academic teams of the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), University of Maryland (UMD), the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign (UIUC), Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), consulting by Dr. Roger Schmidt, renowned expert in data center cooling, and with direct knowhow and technology input from industry participants, Dr. Saket Karajgikar, Data Center R&D Engineer – Technical Strategy, Meta Inc., and Dr. Ashish Gupta, Director of Thermal- Mechanical, Data Platforms Group at Intel, who have agreed to provide guidance through the duration of the proposal. In particular, Dr. Saket Karajgikar has agreed to provide L11 level (rack and under) hardware support to evaluate the performance of our technology. The NEIT lab team at UMD will work on the development of the DCEC module to achieve superior thermal performance and significantly reduced energy usage.