What key roles and impacts does the innovation of liquid cooling technology have on today’s data centers?

As an important innovation in the field of data center heat dissipation, liquid cooling technology is moving from edge technology to mainstream application with the explosive growth of computing power demand and strict policy requirements on energy efficiency. Its core role is not only to solve the heat dissipation problem of high-density servers, but also to promote the transformation of data centers to green and low-carbon. The following is a comprehensive analysis of the key role of liquid cooling technology in today's data centers and its impact:

1. Break through the bottleneck of traditional air cooling and meet the challenges of high-density computing power
With the rapid development of AI large models, cloud computing and high-performance computing, the power of server chips continues to rise. For example, NVIDIA's Blackwell B200 GPU has a heat output of 1200W under liquid cooling configuration, and the power density of a single cabinet exceeds 100kW, far exceeding the heat dissipation capacity of traditional air cooling below 15kW112. Liquid cooling technology significantly improves heat dissipation efficiency through liquid heat conduction (thermal conductivity is 20-30 times that of air, and volume specific heat capacity is 1000-3500 times that of air), ensuring stable operation of high-power equipment. For example, the AI ​​computing power of Huawei Ascend 910 liquid-cooled version is 100% higher than that of air-cooled version12. Inspur Information's cold plate liquid cooling technology can reduce CPU temperature by 30°C and extend equipment life.

2. Significantly reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions to meet policy compliance requirements
Liquid cooling technology significantly reduces the PUE (power efficiency) of data centers through direct contact heat dissipation and reduced reliance on air conditioning. The average PUE of traditional air-cooled data centers is above 1.5, while cold plate and immersion liquid cooling can reduce PUE to below 1.15 and 1.05 respectively, saving 20%-50%1412. For example, after JD Cloud adopted cold plate liquid cooling, PUE dropped from 1.3 to 1.1, and a single cabinet saved 31,000 kWh of electricity per year9. This advantage directly responds to national policy requirements - such as the "East Data West Computing" project requires the PUE of the eastern hub to be lower than 1.25 and the western hub to be lower than 1.212, and helps achieve the "dual carbon" goal.

3. Optimize data center operating costs (TCO)
Although the initial construction cost of liquid cooling is slightly higher than that of air cooling, its long-term operating cost advantage is significant:

Electricity savings: The comprehensive OPEX (operating expenditure) of cold plate liquid cooling can save more than 60,000 US dollars in 3 years (taking a single cabinet as an example).

Improved space utilization: The density of liquid cooling cabinets can reach 10 times that of traditional cabinets, reducing the floor space and construction costs of computer rooms.

Extended equipment life: Uniform heat dissipation reduces thermal stress and reduces server failure rate by more than 30%.
Taking Inspur Information as an example, its liquid cooling solution improves the comprehensive energy efficiency of the refrigeration system by 30%-50%, with an annual production capacity of 100,000 units, promoting large-scale cost reduction in the industrial chain.

4. Promote the diversification of technical paths and ecological synergy
Liquid cooling technology presents a pattern of "cold plate dominance, immersion potential is large, and air-liquid mixing is a trend":

Cold plate liquid cooling: high maturity, accounting for 90% of the current market share, compatible with existing data center transformation. For example, Intel and JD Cloud have cooperated to achieve a noise reduction of 7dB[A] and a PUE as low as 1.19 through a cold plate solution.

Immersion liquid cooling: The heat dissipation efficiency is the best (PUE<1.1), suitable for AI supercomputing centers. Sugon Digital's immersion phase change liquid cooling technology has been commercialized on a large scale, with a waste heat recovery rate of over 90%.

Air-liquid hybrid mode: Flexible selection for different equipment power consumption, such as air cooling for storage devices and liquid cooling for high-computing servers, taking into account both cost and performance.

5. Promote innovation in the industrial chain and environmental protection upgrades

The popularization of liquid cooling technology forces innovation in all links of the industrial chain:

Coolant research and development: Traditional fluorinated liquids are gradually replaced by synthetic oils due to environmental issues. For example, the PFAS-free coolant developed by ExxonMobil is lower in cost and more environmentally friendly.

Equipment safety optimization: Cold plate liquid cooling eliminates the risk of leakage through negative pressure design (such as Inspur Information's liquid ring vacuum CDU), while immersion type needs to solve the problems of coolant volatilization and compatibility.

Standardization and ecological cooperation: China Academy of Information and Communications Technology released 5 liquid cooling industry standards, and Huawei, Alibaba and other companies jointly formulated technical agreements to promote the large-scale application of cold plate, immersion and other solutions.

6. Expanding application scenarios and industry boundaries
Liquid cooling technology penetrates from supercomputing centers to multiple industries:

Internet and AI: Cold plate liquid cooling is suitable for high-density GPU clusters, such as Tencent Cloud deploying liquid cooling cabinets to support large model training.

Telecommunications and finance: China Mobile plans to use liquid cooling for 50% of its projects in 2025, and the financial industry explores modular liquid cooling solutions to reduce noise.

Edge computing: Ningchang's liquid cooling servers are suitable for edge scenarios, and the deployment cycle is shortened by 30 times.

7. Future trends and challenges
Market scale explosion: It is estimated that the market scale of China's liquid cooling data center will reach 35.9 billion yuan in 2025 (CAGR 72.4%), and the global liquid cooling server market may exceed 120 billion yuan.

Technical bottlenecks: Cooling liquid cost, leakage protection, and operation and maintenance complexity still need to be broken through, for example, immersion liquid cooling is difficult to maintain.

Policy driven: Countries accelerate liquid cooling replacement through subsidies and carbon tax policies. For example, the EU requires data centers to fully use renewable energy and match liquid cooling technology by 2030.

Conclusion
Liquid cooling technology is not only a technological innovation in data center heat dissipation, but also the core driving force of the global green computing revolution. With the maturity of technology, cost reduction and ecological improvement, liquid cooling will change from an "optional option" to a "must-have option", reshaping the energy efficiency standards and operation models of data centers, and providing underlying support for the sustainable development of the digital economy.