Is this the ‘Penicillin’ of keeping data centers cool?
EXCLUSIVE: The liquid cooling startup Nexalus takes a big step toward primetime.
Data centers run hot. The servers that store information, power artificial intelligence software, and keep the internet running need constant access to cooling to prevent hard drives from overheating. Good, old-fashioned air conditioning is one very energy-intensive method.
Another approach particularly popular for AI data centers is called evaporative cooling, or “swamp cooling,” that pulls warm air through wet pads and naturally cools the servers by evaporating the vast majority of the freshwater it uses. That’s a big part of why data centers are consuming upward of 250 million gallons of freshwater per day. While that’s still far below that of the unquenchable meat and dairy industries, the market for solutions to slash water use is only growing.
Kenneth O’Mahony thinks his technology represents a breakthrough for the data center industry on par with the advent of antibiotics.
His Cork, Ireland-based startup, Nexalus, has designed a unique liquid-cooling system that uses microjets to spray the hottest part of the microchip directly and seals the entire server in a closed-loop, air-tight box. The other components in the server are cooled with fans provided with colder air through a heat exchanger. In total, the system consumes 30% less electricity than the same amount of computing from traditionally-cooled data centers. The system takes up less space, since the facility doesn’t require the same air flow to make evaporative cooling work, shrinking the overall size of the server farms by 25%. Since there’s no need for giant air conditioning units, the HVAC costs fall by 89%, even when you account for the particular piping needed for the liquid cooling system.
“It’s like Penicillin,” Kenneth O’Mahony, Nexalus’ co-founder and chief executive, told me.
Now, as I can exclusively report for this newsletter, the company has inked a deal with the Japanese electronics manufacturer Alps Alpines to ramp up production of its technology.
