Systems Two Phase Cooling

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Program:
COOLERCHIPS
Award:
$2,629,666
Location:
Yorktown Heights, New York
Status:
ACTIVE
Project Term:
10/01/2022 - 09/30/2025

Technology Description:

IBM will develop an energy-efficient two-phase cooling system for data center servers to significantly reduce energy and water usage. The system will improve data center energy efficiency over traditionally air-cooled data centers that consume 25-35% of the total data center energy usage. The proposed system will flow non-conductive, dielectric liquid coolant within a server by placing heat extracting cold plates in direct contact with high power components (CPUs, GPUs, etc.), reducing the thermal resistance between the chip and coolant and allowing above ambient coolant temperature. This can potentially reduce data center cooling energy usage by over 90% compared with compressor-based, air-cooled data centers and eliminate water usage.

Potential Impact:

IBM’s energy efficient two-phase cooling system could reduce cooling energy consumption and eliminate water usage for data centers.

Security:

The proposed system will provide high energy efficiency while supplying reliability, accessibility, and serviceability for data centers.

Environment:

Cold plates reduce the temperature difference between the chip and coolant, enabling coolant temperatures above outdoor ambient and eliminating energy-intensive refrigeration.

Economy:

This offers an opportunity to save 19 billion kWh of electricity usage and 160 billion gallons of water consumption annually in the U.S.

Contact

ARPA-E Program Director:
Dr. Peter de Bock
Project Contact:
Dr. Timothy Chainer
Press and General Inquiries Email:
ARPA-E-Comms@hq.doe.gov
Project Contact Email:
tchainer@us.ibm.com

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Release Date:
09/22/2022