Intel tests oil immersion to cool servers

Intel tests oil immersion to cool servers

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Intel Corp. announced positive results from a year-long test of a novel system that cools servers by immersing them in mineral oil. The CarnotJet vat from Green Revolution Cooling (Austin, Texas) delivered a cooling power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.02-1.03 without impacting performance of the seven dual-socket Xeon servers, Intel said.

The results suggest the oil vats require only two to three percent additional energy than the servers themselves. By contrast, a typical data center runs at a cooling PUE as high as 1.6, meaning the non-IT systems require 60 percent in additional energy beyond the power needed to run the servers.

Some companies such as Facebook have opened new data centers in areas where they can use ambient air to cool their systems, eliminating the costs of air conditioning. But they are not the targets for the oil-immersion systems.

“If you are going to add a significant amount of capacity and have systems with a lot of density and don’t have good air flow in your data center, this is worth looking at,” said Mike Patterson, a senior thermal architect for data centers at Intel who supervised the test.

The Texas Advanced Computing Center is one data center that fits that description. It has been testing the same technology for several years. But oil immersion is not for everyone.

“We probably have ten different advanced cooling technologies we are analyzing…each has its pros and cons, and each market has different priorities,” said Patterson.


Intel dunked seven Xeon servers for a year in a CarnoJet vat from Green Revolution Cooling.

TAG:Green Revolution Cooling Data Centers Oil Immersion Intel Servers Cooling Thermal CarnotJet