Whether you know it or not, you are reading this article thanks to the power of data centers.

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Although we don’t see them in our everyday lives, data centers are the backbone of nearly every digital task we perform. Whether it’s playing music on your commute to work, or watching Netflix before bed, you are using data centers.

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This is important because we are now at an inflection point. Not only are we in the midst of a data explosion, the amount of infrastructure capable of hosting this information is at an all time low. In the top 10 North American markets, vacancy rates are 2.88%, as reported by datacenterHawk. Secondary markets are at 5%. Although billions have been poured into new projects, it leads us to our second problem: sustainability.

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Data centers today are dirty and expensive. If nothing changes, the industry will generate roughly 14% of global carbon emission by 2040. Roughly 40% of costs will be due to inefficient ways of cooling servers, which is incredibly expensive for companies.

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Figure 1: Projections on the amount of data generated in the future. A single zettabyte is about 240 billion DVD’s. Sources via Science Daily and HDFS.

Figure 2: Projected worldwide carbon emissions from data centers as a result of increased data generation. Sources via Computer World and The Guardian.

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An average data center also uses significant amounts of water, up to 5 million gallons per day according to Venkatesh Uddameri. The significant water requirements also have drastic effects on local communities. For example, Google’s water consumption in Dalles, Oregon used 355 million gallons of water in 2022, a figure that’s tripled since 2018 and accounts for nearly ⅓ of the entire city’s total water consumption. Similar issues have arisen in New Mexico, where farmers rallied after the Los Lunas Village Council approved the creation of 6 more data center buildings for Greater Kudu, a Meta (Facebook) subsidiary. The resistance against data centers due to their excessive water consumption have become contentious issues that deserve attention.

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This is why we started Ferveret. We aspire to remove the thermal limits that have hindered the performance and efficiency of electronic processing units for the last two decades in the most sustainable manner possible. But to understand the full picture, it’s important to examine the types of cooling methods that exist in the market today, and why they must change.

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Air Cooling

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Air cooling works by a fan blowing air onto a circuit board which can hold all kinds of computer chips (CPUs, GPUs, and ASICs). Typically, you’ll see heat sinks on the top of these chips which act as a way of dissipating heat by increasing the surface area. To cool the air, a chiller tower filled with water may be used. But there are many problems with this technique, including:

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1. Energy intensive: Up to 40% of the total amount of energy consumed in data centers will be wasted for cooling.

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2. General inefficiencies: No matter the fan speed or the use of heat spreaders, it is impossible to remove heat effectively from very powerful chips.

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3. Reliability issues: If a fan breaks, the system can go offline. Contact between heat syncs and computer chips will also wear off over time.

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Water Cooling

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With water cooling, a metal block (typically made of aluminum) termed a “cold plate” sits on top of all these components, with a set of channels and pump that allows water or other fluids to flow through it. But this system has problems as well, including:

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1. Performance is limited by the interfaces between the chip and the cold plate as well as flow instabilities.

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2. If water leaks, you’re in big trouble.

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Oils

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Oils can be circulated through the same cold plates in water cooling, or you can have the circuit boards submerged in containers. The latter method is known as single-phase immersion cooling. We call it “single-phase” because the fluid remains in a consistent liquid state throughout the entire cooling cycle. The problem with oils is their heat transfer capabilities: the cooling performance is quite low, which means we’re back to adding heat sinks.

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Dielectric Fluids

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This is a non-conductive fluid for two-phase immersion cooling, and we’re using this application in a very specific way at Ferveret. In a two-phase cooling system, the working fluid undergoes a phase change from liquid to vapor as it absorbs heat from the system or object being cooled. This phase change occurs at a specific temperature and pressure, known as the saturation point or boiling point.

This process has the capability to remove incredible amounts of heat so (a) you don’t need heat sinks, and (b) you can remove heat directly from the chip. When built correctly, it has a number of advantages:

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1. Superior heat dissipation: Two-phase immersion cooling provides significantly better heat dissipation compared to any other method. Dielectric fluids have a much higher heat transfer coefficient, allowing them to absorb and dissipate heat more efficiently.

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2. Reduced energy consumption: Dielectric fluids eliminate the need for energy-intensive air conditioning systems, leading to significant cost savings and improved energy efficiency.

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3. Increased density and scalability: By immersing the components directly in the dielectric fluid, heat can be uniformly dissipated across all surfaces, enabling denser server designs and improved scalability.

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4. Noise: Two-phase immersion cooling systems operate silently.

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5. Enhanced reliability: By keeping electronic components at lower operating temperatures, two-phase immersion cooling helps improve the reliability and lifespan of servers and other IT equipment.

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6. Environmental impact: Dielectric fluids require less power consumption and reduce the need for cooling infrastructure, contributing to lower carbon emissions.

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While data centers play a crucial role in our digital lives, their environmental impact poses significant challenges. However, there are solutions available which aim to improve the efficiency and sustainability by implementing advanced cooling methods. At Ferveret, we save data centers 96% in cooling costs, 68% on capital costs, and reduce their carbon footprint by 40% while increasing chip performance by 2X. Today, about 40% of the electricity used in these facilities is wasted on cooling. Our mission is to eliminate this wasted energy.