SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)Phase I project proposes to develop a high performance mineral oil submersion cooling system for computer servers. While CPU (Central Processing Unit) over-clocking offers the potential to increase output from existing servers by up to 30%, it will also increase the heat generated in a small space in a non-linear fashion likely affecting server reliability. Inefficient cooling is a key driver in data center energy consumption, which has recently risen from 1% of US electricity to a predicted 3%. Mineral oil is better and heat dissipation than air, providing better cooling performance to allow over-clocking of computer servers while reducing the amount of cooling energy needed. The proposed Phase I research objectives are to: (i) design and install a cooling system specifically for high performance cooling; (ii) investigate and implement the best method to over-clock servers; (iii) document server performance and cooling requirements of an over-clocked system over a range of CPU clock speeds; (iv) document and improve system ease-of-use and ergonomics. The anticipated technical result is to quantify the performance and cost and energy benefits of a mineral oil immersion cooling system for over-clocked servers. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project comes from (a) increasing server processing power while (b) lowering energy use and (c) lowering build-out costs of a computer data center. For computational-heavy research institutions, over-clocking offers the potential to solve more of society's research needs with fewer resources as computer servers would perform significantly more computations than before. Also, lowering the energy of a large contributor to incremental US electricity demand will greatly benefit the environment. Finally, the build-out costs of a data center, which scales roughly in-line with power consumption, will also be greatly reduced as cooling energy is reduced

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project proposes to commercialize liquid submersion cooling for computer servers. Liquid submersion cooling involves submersion of heat-generating components in a non-electrically-conductive liquid, replacing air as the heat transfer medium. Liquid is significantly better than air to transfer heat, but historically has required cost-prohibitive capital expenditures due to the added complexity of previous liquid cooling architectures. The research objectives are to produce a system capable of being mass produced at low cost, and with compelling system features that drive customer demand. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project includes lowering of one of the largest marginal contributors to US electricity use. The EPA estimates that data centers now use nearly 3% of US electricity, up from nearly 1% in 2000, with nearly half of power being driven by using air as the primary heat transfer medium. This high-efficiency system offers the potential to cut total energy use by nearly 50% by nearly eliminating energy for cooling and reducing server power through internal fan removal, while offering higher cooling performance and lower costs. Also, this new heat-recapture system offers the potential to eliminate nearly all server energy in many locales. Alternate cooling solutions that are cost effective only offer marginal improvements, and as computing becomes a larger part of the economy, the search for more energy and cost efficient technologies will become more critical