In the era of digital economy, data is included in the "new production factors", and the data center, as the key to carrying the value of data, is not only an important infrastructure for the development of the national economy, but also an entity of technological innovation and technology application. High-quality economic development provides the core driving force.
But at the same time, under the general environment of the "dual carbon" strategy, it has become an "irreversible" trend for data centers to move towards green, low-carbon and sustainable development, especially as the national integrated big data centers and new data centers With the introduction of policy documents such as the official launch of the "East Counting West Counting" project, the construction scale and quantity of data centers have also shown a trend of faster growth, which means that the "double carbon" task facing the data center industry is more difficult and Urgent, also put forward higher requirements for "energy saving and emission reduction" of server products.
From this point of view, liquid cooling has almost become the only option for the construction of new data centers in the future. According to the forecast of CCID Consulting, the increasing computing power of data centers will promote the rapid popularization of high-power single cabinets. It is estimated that the average power of global data centers will increase to 25kW in 2025. The transformation of liquid cooling is imperative, and data centers will also enter the "liquid cooling era". According to estimates, it is expected that the market penetration rate of China's liquid-cooled data centers will reach more than 20% by 2025.
In this context, Inspur Information continues to implement the "All in Liquid Cooling" strategy. At present, it has built the largest liquid cooling base in Asia, and through the integration of R&D, production, testing, quality control, delivery, etc. An advanced intelligent manufacturing factory of "5G+Industrial Internet+AI" has been built, and the standardized, high-quality, and serialized production of liquid cooling products has been realized, with an annual production capacity of over 100,000 units. More importantly, the construction of Inspur Information Tianchi liquid cooling base has also created a "lighthouse factory" in the field of liquid cooling intelligent manufacturing, which not only provides a successful "model" for increasing production capacity and scaling up the liquid cooling industry, but also promotes The liquid cooling industry has changed from "workshop production" to "industrial production".
Just as Zhao Shuai, General Manager of Inspur Information Server Product Line, said: "We hope to achieve the same price of air and liquid in 2025. At this stage, the initial investment of liquid cooling is still higher than that of air cooling. This is why Inspur Information is vigorously promoting the industrialization of liquid cooling. Inspur Information will also continue to work hard to minimize the threshold for using liquid cooling for data center users, and better drive data centers into the era of liquid cooling.”
Considerations of "All in Liquid Cooling"
In fact, liquid cooling is a technology launched in the context of solving the high-density heat dissipation of servers. It was born in the 1980s, but it was mainly used by some ultra-large-scale Internet users and high-power computing users before. The "turning point" occurred in the last two or three years.
Zhao Shuai said that in terms of policy drivers, with the advancement of the "Double Carbon" policy and the launch of the "East Count and West Count" project, the state has put forward very clear requirements for the PUE index of the new data center. The PUE requirement in the first two years was controlled at Below 1.4, and now the latest policies in some cities require PUE to be lower than 1.3 or even 1.2. Great changes have taken place at the beginning of the scale; in terms of energy-saving drives, processor chips in the past, regardless of CPU or GPU, were tens of watts or 100 watts in the early days, and now they have reached 350 watts, and they will definitely be higher and higher in the future. At a certain heat density, air cooling is not very good at solving the heat dissipation problem, while liquid cooling can better solve the large-scale heat dissipation problem of the data center and effectively reduce power consumption.
This is also the background behind Inspur Information's "All in Liquid Cooling". :
First, there is the challenge of liquid cooling standardization. Liquid cooling technology is very complicated, involving liquid cooling data center system architecture layer, liquid cooling components and interface layer, liquid cooling infrastructure layer (liquid cooling cabinets, components, heat exchange equipment, outdoor integrated cold source, etc.), liquid cooling monitoring system In terms of layers and other aspects, each enterprise in the industrial chain has a variety of technical paths and product specifications vary widely, which makes it very difficult to standardize the adaptation and deployment of liquid cooling.
Secondly, it is the challenge of industrial chain coordination. Since the development of the liquid cooling industry is in its infancy, the industrial division of labor has not yet been clarified, resulting in weak coordination of the entire industrial chain. Many chain companies rely more on "workshop production" to complete product and service delivery, and the industrial chain lacks a high degree of resource integration. Chain-owner enterprises with limited capacity, resulting in inefficient allocation of resources and serious waste.
"For example, domestic precision machining and precision manufacturing can fully meet all the current cold plate processing and manufacturing links, but why are there fewer suppliers for cold plate manufacturing? The key reason is the lack of coordination and integration of the entire industrial chain, so this is also the case. Inspur Information hopes to unify the testing standards, inspection standards, design standards, and interface standards, so as to better promote the efficient coordination of the entire industrial chain and minimize the cost of materials." Zhao Shuai said.
Finally, there is the challenge of large-scale deployment. Although liquid cooling technology was born earlier, it has been in the stage of small-scale deployment before, mainly for high-power computing users with stricter heat dissipation requirements. For example, the cold plate structure and flow channel design in the cold plate liquid cooling, the cold plate manufacturing process, etc., the compatibility between the cooling medium and the server and the heat transfer capacity of the immersion liquid cooling technology, due to the lack of a long-term cooling system The use of effect verification requires suppliers to continuously test, actively explore practices, and improve and guarantee the reliability and stability of the technology.
For this reason, Inspur Information not only took the lead in investing in the construction of Tianchi Liquid Cooling Industry Base in the industry, but also did a lot of solid work in terms of industry standards, technological innovation, application practice, and industrial chain ecological cooperation. The core goal is: "Open up the entire The industrial chain, more let the production of liquid cooling change from the past "individual combat" production method to a production method that can be mass-produced, replicated, and scaled, and realize the aggregation effect of industrial chain synergy, and finally in In 2025, the same price of wind and liquid will be realized. "
Innovation and Practice of Liquid Cooling Industrialization
Objectively speaking, the "hardest bone" of technological innovation lies in original innovation and achievement transformation, and the same is true for liquid cooling innovation. "As the first batch of people who eat crabs", Inspur Information has not only accumulated and accumulated rich experience and achieved good results through exploration and practice in the field of liquid cooling industry in the past few years, but more importantly, it has also effectively promoted This has promoted the maturity of the liquid cooling industry chain and ecosystem, and accelerated the pace of the entire liquid cooling industry towards industrialization. Specifically:
In terms of liquid cooling standardization, through close cooperation with the upstream and downstream of the liquid cooling industry chain, Inspur Information actively leads the construction of liquid cooling patents and standards. Up to now, Inspur Information has more than 300 core patents in the field of liquid cooling technology, and has participated in the formulation and release More than 10 design technical standards related to cold plate liquid cooling and immersion liquid cooling, and took the lead in formulating the national standard of "General Specifications for Modular Data Centers", leading the establishment of the first batch of domestic group standards for cold plate liquid cooling core components, and the development of the liquid cooling industry The rapid development and large-scale popularization of liquid cooling technology have important guiding significance.
In addition, the first batch of core component standards for cold-plate liquid-cooled data centers in China led by Inspur Information have passed project review and demonstration, and were approved by the Open Computing Standards Working Committee (OCTC), covering cold plates, connection systems, and cooling distribution units , monitoring system and other components, among which the cold plate component standard has been officially released this year. It can be said that the establishment of the technical specifications for the core components of the four heavyweight cold plate liquid-cooled data centers will help component manufacturers to master the design, processing and production of key components for liquid cooling faster, and promote healthy competition and the healthy development of the liquid-cooled component industry.
In order to further promote the standardization and industrialization of liquid cooling, Inspur Information invested in the construction of Tianchi liquid cooling base. Through the integration of the whole chain capabilities including R&D, production, testing, quality control, delivery, etc., the annual production capacity exceeds 100,000 units, and it has become a Currently the largest liquid cooling base in Asia with production capacity. On this basis, relying on the Tianchi liquid cooling base, Inspur Information has also made many breakthroughs in technological innovation, quality control management and overall solutions, which has laid a solid foundation for the large-scale promotion of "inclusive" liquid cooling.
In terms of technological innovation, according to Li Jinbo, deputy general manager of the product department of Inspur Information Data Center, Inspur Information pioneered the liquid ring vacuum CDU that can completely eliminate the hidden danger of liquid leakage. This is a liquid cooling system with negative pressure on both sides. The power unit is equipped with negative pressure in the pipeline, so the leakage problem is completely avoided. At the same time, this technological innovation breaks through the "law" that the liquid cooling circulation system must use a high-pressure water pump to achieve liquid circulation, and realizes the fluid circulation only by controlling the multi-chamber function switching through different sensors through the vacuum pump. While the technology is extremely simplified, the reliability has also been greatly improved, which will effectively promote the popularization of cold plate liquid cooling technology.
For another example, the most common type of cold plate at present is the shovel-toothed liquid cold plate, which is composed of several straight channels, the channel size is small, the density is high, the heat dissipation area is large, and it has a good heat dissipation effect. The flow resistance of the cold plate is relatively large. For this reason, Inspur Information has also innovatively developed a low-flow-resistance cold plate. Compared with the traditional shovel-shaped straight-channel cold plate, the flow resistance is smaller, and the heat dissipation performance of the cold plate can be better maintained.
In terms of quality control management, from component material selection to processing technology to rigorous testing, Inspur Information has established high-standard production technical specifications to ensure high-quality product production. Taking product testing as an example, Tianchi Liquid Cooling Industrial Base meets the research and development, production, and testing requirements of Inspur Information's liquid cooling servers of different specifications. and other overall performance and function tests, while supporting processes such as airtightness, pressure suppression, liquid drainage, and drying. Ensure the high safety and reliability of liquid cooling products, and ensure the high-quality and large-volume delivery of liquid cooling servers.
In terms of application practice, we can see that the Tianchi Liquid Cooling Base itself is also a new type of prefabricated liquid cooling data center. Through high-density test cabinet configuration, prefabricated pipeline ring network design, and full-time and full-parameter monitoring and control, it creates With a set of mature and complete liquid cooling solutions, it can be said that Inspur Information has “made a sample” for the large-scale deployment and industrialization of liquid cooling through its own “practice”.
At the same time, in order to dispel the doubts of data center users about the large-scale deployment of liquid cooling products, Inspur Information also cooperates with partners and industry customers to jointly innovate and actively promote the large-scale deployment and implementation of liquid cooling. Among them, Inspur Information and JD Cloud jointly released the ORS3000S liquid-cooled complete rack server. This is an innovative practice of both parties in green and carbon reduction, and it also verifies the ability of large-scale deployment of liquid cooling. At present, this product has been deployed on a large scale in the JD Cloud data center, providing basic computing power guarantee for JD 618, Double Eleven, CCTV Spring Festival Gala red envelope interaction in the Year of the Tiger, etc., with a performance increase of 34%-56%, helping the JD Cloud data center Reduce PUE and realize low-carbon energy saving. The data shows that up to now, the data centers using Inspur information liquid cooling technology have saved 105 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is equivalent to reducing the consumption of 13,000 tons of standard coal and 35,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. The home uses electricity year-round.
Finally, in terms of industrial chain integration, since Inspur Information incorporated "All in Liquid Cooling" into the company's development strategy in 2022, it has always insisted on promoting the improvement of liquid cooling ecology with serialization of products and services. At present, Inspur Information can provide the "industry's most complete" full liquid cooling products. It has realized that the four major series of general servers, high-density servers, complete cabinet servers, and AI servers all support cold plate liquid cooling, and can also provide immersion cooling. Liquid-cooled products can meet the differentiated demands of different business loads on liquid-cooled servers.
Not only that, Inspur Information has also created a full-stack liquid cooling solution of "end-to-end service". Among them, in terms of component solutions, Inspur Information has a full-line layout from outdoor liquid-cooled primary side circulation cold source to indoor CDU, liquid collector, liquid-cooled secondary side circulation, liquid-cooled server, etc., to create a green and energy-saving data center for users in an all-round way Turnkey project; at the system level, relying on the Tianchi Liquid Cooling Industry Base, Inspur Information can also provide customers with overall solutions for the entire life cycle of liquid cooling data centers, whether it is a new liquid cooling data center or a traditional air cooling old computer room Retrofitting can provide end-to-end services from pre-planning consultation to mid-term equipment customization and post-delivery construction.
Accelerating data centers into the era of liquid cooling
As the saying goes, "the revolution has not yet succeeded, and comrades still need to work hard." In order to achieve the goal of "same price for wind and liquid" in 2025, Inspur Information is currently "working hard" in many aspects, hoping to better promote and accelerate the development of data centers. Enter the era of liquid cooling.
On the one hand, in terms of technology and solution innovation, Inspur Information will continue to carry out technological innovation in the field of liquid cooling, hoping to make breakthroughs in 100% cold plate liquid cooling products in the future. Zhao Shuai told me: "Inspur Information has been working on standards and solutions in this area. In fact, 100% cold plate liquid cooling has been deployed in domestic advanced data centers. This solution is to combine all memory and boards It is achieved through patches; another solution is that in the future, the fusion architecture plus cold plate liquid cooling can also be used to better reduce energy consumption in ultra-large-scale data centers."
Similarly, Inspur Information is also carrying out a lot of testing work on the immersion liquid cooling solution that the industry is more concerned about. For example, materials such as fluorinated liquids and oils are usually used in immersion liquid cooling. The signal compatibility and long-term reliability of these materials also need to pass a large number of tests in the laboratory to obtain perfect data before finally deciding whether they are suitable. "Mass production". "In addition, there are still many new technologies waiting for us to verify and expand in the future, including the current negative pressure cooling, phase change cooling, etc. There is still a lot of room for innovation in this area." Li Jinbo also added.
In the field of liquid cooling integration and intelligent operation and maintenance, Inspur Information hopes to further realize the complete integration of the entire secondary side with the control of the server itself. For example, Inspur Information is delegating the control of the BMC of the server to the CDU, and then uses the CDU to control each server. In this way, it can manage and control the system with good flow control on the CDU side. At the same time, Inspur Information also We are exploring the combination of the entire indoor and outdoor integrated management and control with the server management and control, and finally realize the comprehensive "opening up" from the chip to the environment. In addition, Inspur Information is also exploring the integration with AI technology, continuously accumulating data cases, and through continuous training and tuning, it combines algorithm and chip parameters with infrastructure power consumption for regulation, making the management and control of the entire data center more intelligent .
On the other hand, the industrialization of liquid cooling also has a long way to go. In the future, Inspur Information will continue to promote the industrialization and scale of liquid cooling, making liquid cooling solutions more reliable, convenient and efficient.
In this regard, Zhao Shuai finally emphasized: "Now the whole industry is actively embracing liquid cooling, and the enthusiasm for adopting liquid cooling technology and solutions is high, which also puts forward higher requirements for the conditions of liquid cooling conversion. At this time, the industry chain The value of cooperation with the ecology, and even the advancement of the entire liquid cooling industrialization have become crucial. Therefore, Inspur Information will continue to connect the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain as the core goal of its work in the future, and at the same time provide more liquid cooling products and solutions , so that we can provide more end-to-end services tailored to local conditions according to the different business needs of data center users and different deployment environments, and maximize the green and low-carbon level of user data centers."
In general, from the innovation and practice of Inspur Information's liquid cooling industrialization, it is not difficult to find that Inspur Information has "started" from the fields of standard establishment, technological innovation, application deployment, and ecological cooperation, actively responding to the accelerated trend of the current data center The new trend of "green and low-carbon" development not only brings more efficient and rich liquid cooling products and solutions to the data center, but also creates an innovative path for the exploration and practice of creating a "green and low-carbon" data center in the future Road, and accelerate the data center into a new era of liquid cooling, its value can be described as: "not just now, but also about the future."
Shenyao's Science and Technology Observation was founded by a senior technology media person, Shenski, who has 20 years of experience in dissemination of enterprise-level technology content. He has long focused on the observation and thinking of industrial Internet, enterprise digitalization, ICT infrastructure, and automotive technology.