HPE Eyes AI Dominance with Fanless Direct Liquid Cooling

HPE came out of the gates on Thursday with what it says is a new way to cool the data center that’s supporting ever more AI workloads: fanless direct liquid cooling.

The infrastructure provider, which has made strides into cloud computing, says its patented fanless direct liquid cooling system marks an industry first. The approach will reduce energy costs, carbon dioxide emissions and improve efficiency within the data center, the company said. 

In fact, said Neil MacDonald, executive vice president and general manager for HPE’s high-performance computing and AI business, the efficiency alone “will make 100% fanless direct liquid cooling essential for AI data centers, because these systems are being built with the very highest density of transistors operating at the highest level of performance and creating extreme amounts of heat.”

HPE's Neil MacDonald

To that point, one of AI’s greatest drawbacks lies in its energy consumption. The more processing and demand, the greater the power draw. In HPE’s view, fanless direct liquid cooling serves as the answer to the growing conundrum around AI and energy. That’s because HPE’s new method goes a step beyond hybrid cooling within the data center, which currently combines fans with water to keep heat to a minimum. But that’s not going to suffice as demand for AI workloads increases and companies seek more planet-friendly approaches — and as everyone remains highly attuned to expenses. So, fanless direct liquid cooling to the rescue.

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“This method pumps cooling fluid through coal plates, through the entire system, totally eliminating the need for fans,” MacDonald explained at HPE’s inaugural “AI Day,” held mostly for financial analysts. “As a result, it can also reap the cooling portion of a data center's utility cost by up to 90%. Why does that work so well? Water is just much more efficient at transferring heat than air is.”

Look for Fanless Direct Liquid Cooling to Become ‘Pervasive’

To be sure, HPE is crowing about its fanless direct liquid cooling tactic, touting it as a primary way for data centers to cut their energy costs. While this does not directly impact channel partners or their customers, it stands to reason that lower energy costs within the data center could translate into more appealing locations for housing AI workloads. MacDonald agreed.

“We expect 100% fanless direct liquid cooling to become pervasive in the service provider market,” he said. 

Overall, HPE says fanless direct liquid cooling translates into a 90% reduction in cooling power consumption compared to traditional air-cooled systems. 

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For Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE, the advancement points to the company’s importance.

“Over the last six years, I have led a transformation to increase HPE’s relevance with customers, while aligning our portfolio to the powerful industry trends by pivoting our business to higher growth, higher margin areas of the IT market,” Neri told AI Day attendees. “AI has introduced the biggest technology disruption in a generation, driving what we call a new industrial revolution.”

HPE's Antonio Neri

HPE, he added, is best positioned to meet organizations’ AI needs. 

“We are … innovating in networking, hybrid cloud and AI, which are all essential building blocks to deliver a unified technology experience and accelerate time to value,” he said. “We are executing our strategy in a very thoughtful and disciplined way through a series of both organic and inorganic investments, as well as through curated strategic partnerships across the IT ecosystem.”

Also on Oct. 10, HPE launched the ProLiant Compute XD685. This, says HPE, handles complex AI model training tasks. It features fifth-generation AMD Epyc processors and AMD Instinct MI325X accelerators. HPE sees particular promise for the XD685 to support workflows in health care and climate sciences, and in the general arena of productivity. XD685 users may add liquid direct cooling as an option to their purchases. The XD685 will be generally available in the first quarter of next year.

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