The art of cooling
Data centre cooling is set to be a key issue in 2025, the co-CEO of Iceotope, tells eeNews Europe.
Iceotope is a UK company with a US-based co-CEO and a somewhat chequered past. The company started out in 2012 developing immersion cooling systems, and has since shifted to a hybrid approach. The company sees a key shift in the market in 2025 with the boom in AI, and has a funding round planned. Over the years it has raised a total of £53m, with the last round of $30m in 2022.
“The leading indication is that companies such as Vertiv and Schneider are moving to liquid enabling ecosystems. We think the market is actively preparing for that and 2025 will be a watershed year,” said Nathan Blom, who took over after long term CEO David Craig retired in September and is based in Denver, Colorado. He is co-CEO with chief financial officer Simon Jesenko.
Iceotope is aiming to build up a war chest with the round to allow it to pivot quickly says Blom. “We want to make sure that this round will take us through the next 24 to 36 months, when I think we will be profitable, but I don’t want to close that door too early,” he said.
While the cooling technology is focussed on AI datacentre cooling, with the launch of a system that cools eight GPUs. But the technology has also been used in telecoms systems such as the radio access network (RAN) where AI is also being used.
“Iceotope’s core precision liquid cooling is a hybrid of cooling technology and coldplate which forces cooling directed to the individual components,” said Blom.
“We do not immerse our technology in liquid but we direct our single phase fluid to the components using the least amount of fluid on the bottom of the chassis. Why that’s important is that means you are not having to deal with all the issues of immersion with additional weight and servicing, and fits into an existing rack.”
“Up to this point the ecosystem has been air cooled so we have used air cooled server designs for precision cooling. Gigabyte made some customisations but there is still the empty space from where the fans used to be. In the next generation of products we will design those out of the space and we can do dramatically different things when each component is individually cooled,” he said.
Iceotope is partnering with ODMs who make more custom designs such as Wistron and Sanmina, part of a move to partnerships across the ecosystem, from server makers to rack producers and data centre operators. This is highlighted by market analysts.
“A notable trend identified by IDTechEx is the increasing collaboration across different parts of the supply chain. This shift is driven by the growing complexity of cooling requirements for advanced hardware, such as high-performance GPUs and AI servers,” said Yulin Wang, Senior Technology Analyst at IDTechEx.
“Collaborative efforts aim to align the design, manufacturing, and integration processes to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and improve the performance of cooling solutions. For example, closer partnerships between cooling solution providers and chip makers can result in bespoke cooling designs optimized for specific processors. Similarly, working with system integrators and server OEMs helps streamline the integration of these solutions into larger systems, fostering innovation and ensuring reliability in high-demand applications like AI and cloud computing.”
“We as Iceotope have the partnerships with the cloud service providers to make the business case work for them,” said Blom. “We are not in the business of designing servers, we are cooling experts, so we partner and that includes ODMs and other industry experts who are capable of thinking about this differently.”
“Cold plate is great for what it does, cooling one or two hot things, what it isn’t good at is system wide cooling, We believe the future eis a hybrid, there will be workloads for all, and we are working on a plug and play environment with multiple cooling technologies operating at the same time
“We haven’t reached the limit of the technology,” said Blom. “We did a 1.5kW chip with Intel, and that was because that was as much as they could overclock a Xeon processor. On a rack basis we can exceed 150 to 200kW rack densities.”
The liquid used to carry the heat away is also key, both for performance and for sustainability.
“We are in partnership with every liquid manufacturer in the world and all are refining their liquids. There are both oil and plant based suppliers, and we work with each of them to refine the chemistry so that will continue to improve. But we only work with those with no global warming impact, no PFAS, and the liquids are fully recyclable.”
Iceotope has worked with those partners to server boards that implement the technology as a product such as the KUL AI GPU cooling system.
“With precision liquid cooling you have to see it, so we are creating products under the Iceotope brand and working with strategic customers to dip their toe into the market. Over time I believe this will lead to the technology being built in and it becomes a component in the ecosystem and that’s where the company will ultimately go, that’s a few years.”
That will see a transition from products to IP licensing.
“We’ve got enough strategic interest in the IP portfolio,” said Blom. “You transition from selling the top line, it’s a low pmarging business sin hardware, but if you transisiton to IP licensing and because our IP licensing is also across the data centre and edge, then it’s a margin rich and revenue rich.”
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