- Microsoft Lab tests microfluidic cooling that triples efficiency compared to cold plates
- Researchers say that the new system reduces the 65% GPU heat increase in tests
- Microfluidic cooling promises more dense, faster data centers while reducing the energy costs of IA workloads
Microsoft revealed that he was testing a new chip cooling approach called microfluidic, aimed at resolving one of the biggest challenges for artificial intelligence equipment.
As the AI chips become more powerful, they generate more heat than previous generations, pushing traditional cooling methods near their limits.
Most data centers today use cold plates, where the liquid passes through a plate attached to the chip. This system is separated from the heat source by several layers that trap heat, limiting its effectiveness. Microsoft’s new design takes a different path.
Reliability tests
With microfluidic, tiny grooves are engraved directly at the back of the chip, allowing the cooling liquid to flow on the silicon itself and to remove heat more effectively.
Judy Priest, vice-president of companies and CTOs for operations and cloud innovation at Microsoft, believes that the new approach could reshape the way in which future fleas are built.
“The microfluidic would allow more and more power conceptions that would allow more functionalities that care about customers and will offer better performance in a smaller amount of space,” she said in a blog article announcing the news.
Priest added that after having proven the technology and showed that the design was working, the next step was to test its reliability.
In laboratory experiments, microfluidic has removed heat up to three times better than cold plates, depending on the workload and also reduced the increase in GPU temperature by 65%.
By combining the design of the channels with the AI which maps the unique hot spots on the chip, Microsoft was able to direct the coolant with greater precision.
Sashi Majety, head of the main technical program at Microsoft, said that Heat becomes an obstacle. “If you always count on the traditional technology of cold plates, you are stuck,” he said, adding that in the five years, fleas can be too hot to be effectively cooled with today’s systems.
Microsoft believes that its breakthrough shows how new approaches could allow faster densest data centers while lowering energy consumption for cooling.
The technology giant is collaborating with the Swiss startup Corinttis to refine fleas design.
In order to massively reduce its use of water, Microsoft previously revealed that it worked on a closed loop cooling system for data centers.
A number of other technological companies, including Lenovo, Dell, Supermicro and Giga Computing, also run to develop advanced cooling systems, because overheating risks putting a ceiling at the rate of AI progress.
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