Nvidia · Google · Microsoft · Meta · The Verge
Nvidia confirms its AI data center design runs hotter to tap a lot less water
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By switching to 100 percent liquid cooling and running servers hotter, Nvidia claims it can cut water use to “near zero.”
Key facts
- The efficiency gains are partly due to running AI servers hotter, as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius)
- According to Nvidia’s head of sustainability, Josh Parker, the reference design takes water use “from roughly 2.6 million gallons per megawatt per year for conventional cooling-tower-based systems to near zero, up to a 100 percent reduction
- By switching to 100 percent liquid cooling and running servers hotter, Nvidia claims it can cut water use to “near zero
- With Nvidia’s system, “heat is captured directly at the chip and transported through liquid loops operating at much higher temperatures, allowing outdoor dry coolers to reject heat efficiently
Summary
By switching to 100 percent liquid cooling and running servers hotter, Nvidia claims it can cut water use to “near zero.” Public pushback against data centers has emphasized their water and energy consumption, and now Nvidia is highlighting its claim that the Rubin generation reference design for a fully liquid-cooled data center has “eliminated massive amounts of power usage and pretty much all water usage.” Still, it doesn’t address all of the concerns around AI data centers, including during their construction, and for the power generation requirements of the massive facilities. The efficiency gains are partly due to running AI servers hotter, as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius). Communities are rising up against data centers, and winning.