NVIDIA To Reduce Energy Use With Liquid Cooling

Nvidia announced new plans to reduce energy use through liquid-cooled graphic cards. At Computex, the company announced they’re making a liquid-cooled variation of its A100 compute card. It’s said to consume 30 percent less energy, the company stated.

The company added that they would be making more liquid-cooled versions of their cards, and they also plan to bring this technology to other industries that may need it, like in-car systems needing to remain cool in enclosed spaces, such as Teslas.

Nvidia explained that data centers use one percent of the world’s electricity, so reducing it by a third would be incredibly significant. 

However, it’s not just graphic cards that are part of the problem. Storage and networking equipment draw the amount of power that needs cooling, too. It also includes CPUs since their temperature increases with continuous use.

Liquid absorbs heat better than air. That’s why liquid cooling is so popular with supercomputers, and custom gaming PCs, especially considering that there are billions of gamers worldwide.

It’s easier to cool off warm liquid than to cool off the air in a building. On top of all the other benefits, liquid-cooled cards occupy less space. 

And it’s not just Nvidia that has been considering this particular problem. Many big companies, such as Microsoft, are thinking about their energy usage as part of the world’s problem with carbon emissions. 

While cards are not the only problem, liquid-cooled cards could be one solution. Microsoft has even gone as far as putting an entire data center underwater in an attempt to use less energy.

Nvidia’s liquid-cooled cards are marketed as being directed at “mainstream servers.” So, whether Nvidia will decide to build liquid cooling into the reference designs still stands. The company has not mentioned any such plans yet.