Researchers at Waterloo Engineering are developing a system to cool power-hungry artificial intelligence (AI) data centres more economically by targeting sudden hotspots on computer chips with a single drop of boiling coolant.
The concept builds on the team’s previous work to wrap drops of one liquid in a thin skin of another and combines general immersion cooling with inexpensive deionized water with limited use of much more costly coolant.
“It’s a division of labour,” said Dr. Sushanta Mitra, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering and executive director of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology. “Water is excellent at handling steady, everyday heat and the drops take care of sudden spikes.”
The research team also included Dr. Tian-Yu Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher, and PhD student Arnav Banerjee.
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