DIGITIMES believes that as single-phase direct liquid cooling applications expand and chips/server hardware face increasing heat-dissipation pressure, the industry will not only pursue structural changes to key single-phase direct liquid cooling components, such as cold plates, but will also make significant R&D efforts in two-phase direct liquid cooling based on phase-change technology.
This technology can boost liquid-cooling performance without major changes to the overall hardware architecture. More two-phase liquid cooling solutions are expected to emerge by 2026.
Among the various technologies, liquid cooling is expanding much faster than air cooling, while immersion cooling is gradually entering its commercial application growth phase, becoming an important new force reshaping the thermal management market.
Chart 1: Global cooling market scales by method, 2022-2023, 2030 (US$b)
Chart 2: Global cooling patent applications, 2005-2025 (units)
Chart 3: Drivers pushing patent deployment and obstacles in solution development
Chart 4: Patent distribution of top-20 liquid-cooling patent-family holders by solution
Chart 5: Patent volume and solution share of top-20 liquid-cooling patent-family holders
Chart 6: Patent volume owned under direct cooling patent family by holder (units)
Chart 7: Patent volume owned under immersion cooling patent family by holder (units)
Chart 8: Patent scale and innovation intensity of patent holders
Chart 9: Two major deployment strategies for server liquid cooling patents
