Experimental Investigation on Single-phase Immersion Cooling Solution for Data Center Application

The continuous advancement of data centers (DCs) driven by the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous driving, edge computing and mobile internet search service has led to severe energy consumption concern globally. It impacts not only the design complexity and total cost of ownership (TCO) of DC but the realization of carbon peak and carbon neutrality (dual carbon) goals. In order to improve energy efficiency and meet the requirement for green and sustainable DC, it is critical to reduce total power consumption of DC to reach optimal Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). Immersion cooling solution has emerged as a potential and prominent candidate to reduce PUE due to its advantages in terms of enhanced cooling capability, high rack power density and energy efficiency by submerging IT equipment into a pool of dielectric liquid.Baidu Inc (Baidu) has investigated experimentally the technical feasibility of single-phase immersion cooling solution for DC’s application and developed the Scorpio 5.0 immersion cooling rack solution (ICRS) to improve energy efficiency and sustainability of DC under collaboration with Intel. This paper demonstrates in detail the Scorpio 5.0 ICRS, specifically the design of tank, power supply unit (PSU), remote management control (RMC) and servers etc. as well as the experimental data on tank’s shock and vibration, thermal cooling performance, material compatibility and improvement on power consumption and CPU operation frequency. DC level analysis in terms of maintenance, PUE and TCO benefit are also addressed in this paper. According to typical DC operation, the Scorpio 5.0 ICRS could achieve PUE below 1.1, improve the TCO by 7% to 17% in five years operation, promote the computing capability of servers by 7.51% on SPECCPU rate and reduce unit servers power consumption by 30+W.The Scorpio 5.0 ICRS has been completely verified for pilot deployment and provides a technical reference for the application of immersion cooling in DC, which together with Intel Xeon processors not only empowers the construction and transformation of green DC but drives the development of a low carbon digital economy.