NVIDIA bets on liquid cooling in GPUs to reduce energy consumption in data centers

NVIDIA announced new plans to reduce power consumption in data centers through liquid-cooled accelerator cards. Starting from a liquid-cooled version of the NVIDIA A100 GPU, the company promises that the consumption of the card will be 30% lower with this technology.alleviating the gigantic energy consumption of systems that handle a very high volume of data.

Equinix works with NVIDIA, it is a global data center provider that manages more than 240 systems around the world and is committed to becoming the first to invest in sustainability in this area. “We have 10,000 customers who are counting on us to help them on this journey. They demand more data and more intelligence, often with AI, and they want it in a sustainable way,” said Zac Smith, director of Equinix.

In tests conducted by NVIDIA and Equinix, it was found that a data center equipped with liquid-cooled A100 GPUs running the same workload as a conventionally cooled system reduces power consumption by up to 30%. NVIDIA estimates that data centers can achieve 1.15 PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) with liquid-cooled GPUs, compared to 1.6 PUE with conventional cards.

Same power, more benefits

Another advantage of accelerator cards equipped with a liquid cooling system is that they take up less space because they do not need large heatsinks or fans as is usually the case with conventional video cards.

In addition to reducing the total consumption of a system by up to 30%, companies would use up to 66% fewer racks, depending on the size of their infrastructure, reducing not only energy costs, but also equipment costs.

NVIDIA has assured that partner companies such as Asus, ASRock Rack, Foxconn Industrial Internet, GIGABYTE, among others, will make their integrated racks with liquid-cooled A100 GPUs available later this year.

The tech industry giant’s new focus, starting with liquid-cooled A100 GPUs, will begin this year.