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Server air cooling turning to 3D VC solutions for better efficiency, says DIGITIMES Research

Kaylee Chiu, DIGITIMES Research, Taipei 0

Credit: DIGITIMES

With air cooling being the mainstream solution at data centers, 3D Vapor Chambers (VCs) have successfully broken through the theoretical heat dissipation limitations of air cooling and brought higher heat dissipation efficiency to data centers. DIGITIMES Research predicts that 3D VCs will become mainstream air cooling solutions for servers in 2024-2025.

DIGITIMES Research observes that constructing new-generation data centers highlights the growing importance of cooling solutions, especially in pursuing higher performance and optimized Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).

Amid the fast-growing demand for Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications, traditional air-cooling heat dissipation solutions are gradually coming to bottlenecks. 3D VCs, which have a heat dissipation efficiency of nearly 1.5 times that of traditional air-cooling solutions, is more appealing.

The rise of HPC and AI has brought more challenges to data centers. Among them, how to effectively dissipate heat is the most critical. Major data center operators must tackle issues arising from high server density, capacity expansion, energy saving, and growing demand for HPC.

They will seek to realize PUE targets and improve cooling efficiency in response to growing computing needs.

Amid the growing demand for computing performance, the development of data centers is no longer only guided by the goal of reducing PUE values, but also by the influences from the developments of generative AI and HPC, as well as concerns about energy consumption.

Driven by the rapid rise of HPC and GenAI, the improvements to CPU and GPU performances will also be accompanied by rising Thermal Design Power (TDP) and more challenges to heat dissipation.