Microsoft is starting to immerse its servers in liquid to improve performance and energy efficiency. This process has existed in the industry for several years. However, Microsoft claims this is the first experience to use two-phase immersion cooling. This was reported with a link to the manufacturer’s official page in The Verge.
Cooling is accomplished by completely immersing the server racks in a specially formulated non-conductive liquid. This is a fluorocarbon based solution. It removes heat from direct contact with components, thereby achieving a lower boiling point of about 50 degrees Celsius. After this, a condensation process takes place, in which the liquid again enters the bath. The result is a cyclical system that requires no energy to move the solution through the tank, significantly reducing operating costs.
Christian Belady, vice president of Microsoft’s Advanced Development Division, explained that the new system resembles a regular bathtub with a shelf inside. The cooling process does not have any unique special effects: the liquid in the tank “boils” just like in a saucepan. Just to heat the water on the stove, the temperature should be 100 degrees Celsius, and 50 degrees is enough for the new system to work optimally.
By and large, liquid immersion cooling for computing equipment was the first to be used by participants in the cryptocurrency industry. Microsoft is interested in this method because the company has been using it for several years to test intensive workloads on a neural network. Research has shown that two-phase immersion cooling reduces the power consumption of any server by 5-15%.
Microsoft’s study of a new cooling system is part of the company’s multi-pronged strategy to make data centers more resilient and efficient to build, operate and maintain.
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