Asetek’s tech for a growing smartphone market

Most people today take the remarkable convenience and productivity of their smartphones, tablets and personal computers for granted. Too many fail to grasp the immense amount of energy that’s needed in data centres to support their devices.

Data centres are rooms filled with racks of servers, where online data is processed and stored in the so-called cloud. The fundamental problem with the cloud is that a large proportion of the power that goes into a server gets translated into heat that must then be cooled – which takes a lot of energy. With the explosive growth of cloud computing, data centre cooling has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing energy problems. In fact, approximately one percent of all electricity used on the planet today goes towards cooling data centres.

Almost all data centres rely on air conditioners for cooling by blowing cold air through each server to remove the heat. “It’s hard to imagine a less efficient cooling system,” says Andre Eriksen, the CEO and founder of Asetek Inc. There is a much better solution.

Eriksen, a native of Denmark, was the recipient of the country’s Best Entrepreneur award in 2000, says: “It just doesn’t make any sense that you should spend as much energy cooling a data centre as you do running it.” The company he founded has developed a breakthrough liquid cooling technology for data centres at its engineering facilities in Denmark. Asetek manufactures in Denmark and China.

Water cooling the cloud
Water is a far more effective cooling medium than air because it is 4,000-times better at storing and transporting heat. This is why the radiator in your car uses water to cool the engine, and why it feels cold when you step into the ocean, even if the water temperature is the same as the air temperature. Asetek’s Rack Cooling Distribution Unit (RackCDU) system utilises this advantage by bringing water directly to the hottest components inside each server and removing the heat before it escapes into the air.

We are changing the paradigm of liquid cooling for data centres by making liquid cooling cost-effective for all data centres, not just the small handful of enormous super-computers that use it

The heated water is then pumped out of the data centre. The liquid is completely self-contained in a sealed system of liquid tubes and small-pump/cold plate units that fit inside each server. No liquid ever comes into contact with the electronics. Water is such an efficient coolant that warm water keeps servers running comfortably, meaning no power is required to actively chill the water. It is cooled for free with outside air.

The water that comes out of the servers is surprisingly hot, at a temperature around 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius), enabling data centres to reuse this heat as an energy source for other applications (such as central heating or hot water). Data centres around the world generate more than 400trn BTUs of unused waste heat each year.

The University of Tromso, in Norway, recently selected RackCDU to capture data centre waste heat to warm its campus. Eriksen says: “Now, rather than having to pay an extraordinary amount of money just to remove the waste heat from your data centre, you can actually capture it and reuse the heat for other things, saving even more money.”

Making the future affordable
Compared to air-cooling, liquid cooling can cut data centre cooling energy by up to 80 percent, while allowing the heat to be captured and reused. It has the potential to reduce global data centre energy consumption by up to 50 billion kilowatt-hours annually, equalling the output of almost six nuclear power plants, at a saving of more than $10bn per year.

With so much money at stake, why isn’t liquid cooling already deployed in every data centre? In fact, liquid cooling for data centres isn’t a new idea; IBM has been doing it since building the earliest mainframe computers. But those previous liquid cooling systems were much too expensive and complicated for general use.

Eriksen said: “We are changing the paradigm of liquid cooling for data centres by making liquid cooling cost-effective for all data centres, not just the small handful of enormous supercomputers that use it today.”

RackCDU is designed to be installed into standard commercial servers, and can be installed at the factory or as a retrofit to existing data centres. The cost of an installed system can typically be repaid within a period of less than 12 months, through a combination of energy cost savings, and other equipment and maintenance savings.

The coming thing
In the past few months, installations have been announced at multiple high-profile data centres, including the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the National Renewable Energy Lab and the US Department of Defense. Cray, one of the biggest names in high-performance computing, launched the first product line featuring the system in November 2012.

This is not Asetek’s first foray into the liquid cooling of computers. It is already the world’s leading supplier of liquid cooling systems for the computer workstation and gaming PC market. The company has more than 1.3 million systems in the market today, sold by big-name manufacturers including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Asus, Lenovo, Intel and AMD.

The pressing problem of data centre cooling will only grow as more people around the globe buy smartphones and adopt digital lifestyles. Eriksen says he founded Asetek to address this concern with a more efficient and cost-effective approach. The company recently completed its initial public offering. Eriksen says: “This situation presents a gigantic business opportunity for us, while also moving the dial on a huge environmental problem and that is what’s driving me.”

The dirty little secret about data centres is all too clear. The many benefits of cloud computing come at a substantial price in terms of energy burdens and climate change effects. Computer scientists and environmentalists alike can both agree that a better way is needed to cool down data centres. In its own way, Asetek is working to create a more sustainable planet for everyone, not just data centre managers.

Further information: sem@asetek.com; www.asetek.com