The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected Intel as one of the organizations involved in the development of high-performance, energy-efficient cooling solutions for future data centers. This selection is part of the COOLERCHIPS program supported by the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Intel’s project, expected to span three years with $1.71 million in funding, aims to enable the continuation of Moore’s Law by effectively managing the heat generated by future high-performance processors.
Data centers consume a significant amount of electricity, accounting for approximately 2% of total U.S. electricity consumption. Data center cooling alone can contribute up to 40% of the energy used by these facilities. The selected projects, including Intel’s, aim to reduce energy consumption and the carbon footprint associated with data center cooling.
To meet the increasing demand for computing capacity and performance, future data center processors are projected to require power exceeding 2 kilowatts (kW), which poses cooling challenges with existing technologies. Intel’s cooling solutions will enhance the capabilities of its processors, as well as those produced through Intel Foundry Services. By developing energy-efficient and sustainable solutions, Intel aims to support the continuation of Moore’s Law and promote energy efficiency.
Intel plans to collaborate with academic and industry leaders to develop its immersion cooling solution. The project involves the integration of coral-shaped immersion cooling heat sinks within a 3D vapor chamber cavity to accommodate denser and higher-performance devices. The design focuses on optimizing 3D vapor chambers to distribute heat more effectively. Novel heat sinks will be 3D-printed and tested under various operating conditions.
To further enhance heat transfer, the team will employ boiling enhancement coatings that reduce thermal resistance by facilitating high nucleation site density. The use of a coral-like heat sink design with internal groove-like features has shown promise for efficient external heat transfer coefficients in two-phase immersion cooling. Computational methods will be utilized to identify the optimal design for the heat sinks, which differ from conventional long, parallel rib heat sinks.
The innovations developed by the team will be integrated into a two-phase immersion cooling system. This system involves servers operating in a sealed tank filled with a non-conductive liquid medium. The heat generated by the servers causes the liquid to boil, forming vapor that undergoes a phase change to return to a liquid state while removing heat, similar to how an air conditioning system operates in a home.
The project’s goal is to improve the overall efficiency of the two-phase immersion cooling system from 0.025 °C/watt to less than 0.01 °C/watt, representing a more than 2.5 times improvement in efficiency.
