Podcast: Turn-Key Data Center Liquid Cooling Considerations with Park Place Technologies and ZutaCore

For this episode of the Data Center Frontier Show podcast, we sat down with liquid cooling data center partners Park Place Technologies and ZutaCore. During the podcast, DCF Editor in Chief Matt Vincent spoke with Chris Carreiro, Chief Technology Officer for Park Place Technologies, and Manfreid Chua, Vice President - Business Development, AI & Sustainability for ZutaCore, about how the companies' partnership is enhancing liquid cooling technology prospects for sustainable AI computing.

In September, Park Place announced the expansion of its portfolio of IT infrastructure services to include the two major liquid cooling formats for data centers, i.e immersion liquid cooling and direct-to-chip cooling. ZutaCore is a key developer and supplier of direct-to-chip, waterless liquid cooling technology which formally supports NVIDIA's GPUs.

Direct-to-chip advanced liquid cooling technologies apply coolant directly to the server components that generate the most heat, including CPUs and GPUs. And Park Place notes that immersion cooling empowers data center operators to do more with less: less space and less energy. Using liquid cooling methods, the company contends that businesses can increase their PUE by up to 18 times, and rack density by up to 10 times. Ultimately, this level of efficiency can lead to power savings of up to 50%, which in turn leads to lower operational costs.

Park Place also notes how, from an environmental perspective, liquid cooling is significantly more efficient than traditional air cooling. The company reckons that, at present, air cooling technology only captures 30% of the heat generated by the servers, compared to the 100% captured by immersion cooling, resulting in lower carbon emissions for businesses that opt for immersion cooling methods. Park Place prides itself on providing a single-vendor outlet for the whole liquid cooling technology adoption process, from procuring the hardware, conversion of the servers for liquid cooling, to installation, maintenance, monitoring and management of the hardware and the cooling technology.

“Our turn-key liquid cooling offerings have the potential to have a significant impact on our customers’ costs and carbon emissions, two of the key issues they face today,” said Carreiro. “Park Place Technologies is ideally positioned to help organizations cut their data center operations costs, giving them the opportunity to re-invest in driving innovation across their businesses."

In the course of our talk, Carreiro highlighted the challenges of data centers' AI sustainability conundrum, and the corresponding benefits of Park Place's warranties. For his part, ZutaCore's Manfreid Chua delved into the industry's shift from air to liquid cooling due to the demands of generative AI, and the advantages of his company partnering with Park Place for optimizing the energy efficiency footprint of data centers.

Additionally, Chua shared insights regarding the economic value of NVIDIA's AI accelerators, and the finer points of the race to sustainability and net zero for large-scale AI data centers. Chua talked about talk about how resources like land, energy, and water all become possible limiting factors for AI factories at scale, and how liquid cooling can help alleviate such limitations.

Here's a timeline of the podcast's key points:

0:49 - On how the partnership between Park Place Technologies and ZutaCore is enhancing the liquid cooling value proposition for sustainable AI computing.

1:32 - Carreiro addresses the challenges for liquid cooling innovation in the AI sustainability space, and highlights how Park Place can offer warranties for equipment that might otherwise void existing warranties.

3:55 - Chua holds forth on the data center industry's tipping point into liquid cooling due to increased demand for generative AI, emphasizing the need for higher thermal design power and the shift from air cooling to liquid cooling technologies.

13:00 - Carreiro outlines the benefits of having Park Place as a single vendor solution for liquid cooling processes, emphasizing the ease of working with one partner throughout the entire project lifecycle.

14:05 - Chua elaborates on the advantages of partnering with Park Place for optimizing data center decisions, particularly in greenfield and brownfield sites, focusing on energy efficiency and sustainability targets.

26:00 - Chua shares insights on the economic value of NVIDIA's AI accelerators, noting a five to one ROI and the urgency for rapid deployment due to increasing demands from AI models.

29:53 - On the importance of sustainability in large-scale AI data centers, and how optimized designs can help companies meet net zero targets.

32:52 - Carreiro addresses the future of liquid cooling trends in the data center industry, focusing on innovations in power demand and water usage, particularly regarding waterless deployments.

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