Digital infrastructure company Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ:EQIX) today announced plans to expand support for advanced liquid cooling technologies—such as direct-to-chip—in more than 100 of its International Business Exchange® (IBX®) data centers in more than 45 metros worldwide.
This builds on Equinix’s existing offering that supports liquid-to-air cooling, via a rack heat exchanger, in nearly every IBX today. This expansion will enable more enterprises to use the most efficient cooling technologies for the powerful, high-density hardware that supports compute-intensive workloads such as artificial intelligence (AI).
With commercialized direct-on-chip liquid cooling support in more than 45 metros—including London, Silicon Valley, Singapore and Washington—customers can deploy advanced liquid cooling solutions against critical needs in the markets that matter most to them.
Equinix provides direct access to the Equinix® platform ecosystem of partners and providers. Continuing this approach, Equinix is committed to empowering digital leaders with the ability to evolve their next-generation liquid-cooled designs.
“Liquid cooling is revolutionizing the way data centers cool powerful, high-density hardware that supports emerging technologies, and Equinix is at the heart of this innovation,” said Tiffany Osias, Vice President of Global Colocation, Equinix. “We have been helping businesses with significant liquid cooling applications across a range of sizes and deployment densities for years. Equinix has the experience and expertise to help organizations innovate data center capacity to support complex, modern IT deployments that require applications like artificial intelligence.”
Equinix supports important liquid cooling technologies, including direct-on-chip heat exchanger and backdoor, so customers can take advantage of the most efficient solutions. In addition, Equinix offers a vendor-neutral approach to enable customers to use their preferred hardware provider in their deployments.
Direct-to-chip is a unique approach that involves a cold plate sitting on top of the chip inside the server. The cold plate is enabled with fluid supply and return channels, allowing technical coolant to flow through the plate, removing heat from the chip. This allows direct-on-chip servers to be installed in a standard IT cabinet, just like legacy air-cooled equipment, even when cooled in an innovative way. Backdoor heat exchangers use a cooling coil and fans to capture heat from air-cooled IT equipment. They are installed directly in customer cabinets, so they are able to handle higher cooling loads than conventional cooling.