Equinix Expands Support for Advanced Liquid Cooling Technologies
Equinix recently announced its plans to enhance support for advanced liquid cooling technologies, such as direct-to-chip cooling, in over 100 of its International Business Exchange® (IBX®) data centers across more than 45 cities worldwide. This expansion comes as a response to the growing demand for high-performance cooling solutions to accommodate compute-intensive workloads like artificial intelligence (AI).
According to Sean Graham, Research Director at IDC, the rise of data-intensive applications like AI has led to an increase in hardware densities within data centers, making traditional cooling methods inefficient. As a result, there is a growing need for liquid-cooled solutions, and Equinix is stepping up to meet this demand.
Support for Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling
Equinix now offers commercialized support for direct-to-chip liquid cooling in more than 45 cities worldwide, including key markets like London, Silicon Valley, Singapore, and Washington D.C. This allows customers to deploy advanced liquid cooling solutions to address their mission-critical requirements in strategic locations.
Tiffany Osias, Vice President of Global Colocation at Equinix, highlighted the importance of liquid cooling in supporting emerging technologies and praised Equinix’s role in driving innovation in this space. Equinix has the expertise to assist organizations in designing data center capacity to accommodate modern IT deployments such as AI.
Diverse Cooling Technologies
Equinix supports a range of liquid cooling technologies, including direct-to-chip and rear-door heat exchangers, giving customers the flexibility to choose the most efficient solutions for their needs. The direct-to-chip approach involves a cold plate placed on top of the chip inside the server, with channels for cooling fluid to extract heat from the chip directly. This innovative method allows for efficient cooling of high-density hardware while maintaining a standard IT cabinet setup.
Furthermore, Equinix’s vendor-neutral approach enables customers to work with their preferred hardware providers for seamless deployments. The company’s commitment to supporting liquid cooling solutions aligns with industry standards, such as the Open19 project, which aims to create open standards for hardware integration in data centers.
Partnerships and Collaborations
Equinix has collaborated with leading technology providers like CoolIT Systems and ZutaCore to develop cutting-edge liquid cooling solutions. Steve Walton, CEO of CoolIT Systems, emphasized the importance of liquid cooling for next-generation infrastructure, highlighting the performance and energy efficiency benefits it offers.
Similarly, Erez Freibach, Co-founder and CEO of ZutaCore, praised Equinix’s efforts to expand the availability of liquid cooling enabled data centers, emphasizing the role of waterless liquid cooling in driving towards a sustainable and emissions-free data industry.
Overall, Equinix’s commitment to advancing liquid cooling technologies underscores its dedication to supporting the evolving needs of data-intensive applications and empowering businesses to achieve optimal performance and efficiency in their digital infrastructure.
