The development history of liquid cooling technology is as follows

The development history of liquid cooling technology is as follows

Summary

Since the late 19th century, liquid cooling technology began to emerge and was applied to the cooling of extra-high voltage transformers. Subsequently, it was widely used in the automotive industry.

The development history of liquid cooling technology is as follows

Early Start-up Stage (Late 19th Century - 1963)

Since the late 19th century, liquid cooling technology began to emerge and was applied to the cooling of extra-high voltage transformers. Subsequently, it was widely used in the automotive industry. The liquid cooling technology in this period laid the foundation for its subsequent applications in other fields.

Preliminary Application Stage in the Computer Field (1964 - 1999)

  • In 1964: IBM developed the world's first enterprise-class computer, System 360, which adopted a direct gas-liquid hybrid cooling method, and liquid cooling began to enter the computer field.
  • In the 1970s: Liquid cooling technology gradually became a standard configuration for supercomputers, but it was not widely promoted. It mainly adopted water cooling methods, using water cooling plates or water cooling pipes for heat dissipation.
  • In the 1980s: With the emergence of microprocessors and high-performance computers, more advanced liquid cooling systems such as cooling towers and cooling circulation systems came into being. Cray Research Company launched the first supercomputer, Cray-2, using liquid cooling technology. However, later, the emergence of CMOS technology reduced the power consumption of computers, and the importance of liquid cooling declined.
  • In the 1990s: The rise of data centers and the popularization of the Internet promoted the development of liquid cooling technology, which began to be widely applied in fields such as data centers, games, and customized PCs to meet the requirements of high-performance computing and heat dissipation.

Technology Upgrade Stage (2000 - 2010)

  • In 2008: IBM returned to the liquid cooling field and released the liquid-cooled supercomputer Power575.
  • In 2009: Intel launched a mineral oil immersion cooling system.
  • In 2010: Direct cooling and immersion cooling solutions began to be used in high-performance computing environments.

Standardization and Domestic Layout Stage (2011 - 2017)

  • In 2011: Sugon began to explore and research server liquid cooling technology.
  • In 2013: Sugon completed the prototype of the first cold plate liquid-cooled server and the verification of the first immersion liquid cooling principle; in the same year, Green Revolution Cooling (GRC), an American cooling technology company, pioneered the design of horizontally placing racks to accommodate immersion liquids.
  • In 2015: Sugon deployed a large-scale commercial application project.
  • In 2016: ASHRAE released the standard ASHRAE 90.4 for data center liquid cooling systems.
  • In 2017: Inspur Information released a solution centered on cold plate liquid-cooled servers, and Huawei launched the FusionServer liquid cooling solution; in the same year, the Data Center Liquid Cooling Technology Research Project of the US Department of Energy released a liquid cooling technology standardization roadmap.

Wide Application and Promotion Stage (2018 - Present)

  • In 2018: Google released TPU3.0 Pod and announced the adoption of liquid cooling technology in its data centers; Alibaba deployed an immersion liquid cooling system in its Zhangbei data center; Total, a French energy company, announced the construction of a liquid-cooled data center; OCP launched the “Open Compute Liquid Cooling” initiative to promote the standardization and adoption of liquid cooling technology.
  • In 2019: The Supercomputing Center of the University of Cambridge in the UK adopted direct liquid cooling technology; the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology released the “Data Center Liquid Cooling Technology Standardization White Paper”. Since then, relevant domestic institutions have successively formulated and released a series of liquid cooling technology standards and norms.
  • In 2020: Major global cloud service providers accelerated the layout of liquid-cooled data centers. Microsoft tested two-phase immersion cooling technology in its Azure data centers, deployed a cold plate liquid cooling solution in its data centers.
  • In 2022: NVIDIA released the data center PCIe A100 GPU accelerator using direct chip cooling technology; Intel invested in building a large laboratory to research data center technology; ByteDance widely applied liquid cooling technology in its data centers; industries such as governments, operators, and education also began to introduce liquid cooling.
  • In 2023: ExxonMobil launched an immersion coolant for data centers; Intel and Submers jointly launched an immersion liquid cooling system, “Forced Convection Heat Sink (FCHS)”.