Cold Plate Cooling Investigation for High-Speed Electronic Interconnect

Power dissipation of quad small form-factor pluggable-double density (QSFP-DD) interconnect system is increasing almost linearly with respect to the data speed. Fan cooling solution which was conventionally used for QSFP-DD is no longer adequate to meet the demanding thermal management requirements. In the current work, water-cooled cold plate thermal management solution was proposed for QSFP-DD. The study starts with experiments for 1 × 3 QSFP-DD system, in which temperature rise, pressure drop, flow rate, and power dissipation are measured and compared with simulation results. Subsequently, case studies were carried out in simulations to investigate the effects of cold plate number of channels, channel height, and pedestal area on the thermal-hydraulic performance of the cold plate. An empirical Nusselt number correlation was proposed to predict the thermal performance of water-cooled cold plate for QSFP-DD applications. The study reveals that number of channels plays the most significant role in heat transfer performance while channel height plays the most significant role in pressure drop of the cold plate.