Graphics card maker Nvidia took advantage of Computex 2022, a major computer show, on May 24 to announce a liquid-cooled version of its A100 GPU. Less energy-intensive than air cooling, this component is intended for businesses. Electricity consumption for server cooling could be reduced by a third with this new model.
A smaller, more capable Nvidia GPU
Reserved for professional use, such as for data centers that provide access to cloud services, Nvidia’s A100 GPU has been available since 2020. On the occasion of Computex 2022, the graphics card manufacturer has planned to release third quarter a new model with liquid cooling.
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According to Nvidia, this new iteration of its GPU should make enterprise servers less energy-intensive than with air cooling. This method, still widely used, requires regulating the temperature of the building that houses the servers. According to tests conducted by Nvidia, liquid cooling would allow reduce electricity consumption by 30%.
Liquid absorbs heat better than air. Once a liquid is heated, it is easier to transfer it elsewhere to let it cool. This type of cooling also makes it possible to reduce the size of the component. Thanks to the design of the water container, the GPU takes up half the space of the old model.
Companies will then be able to use more graphics cards to improve the performance of their servers. Nvidia claims that GPU-based systems will become more efficient than CPU-dependent servers, especially in the area of artificial intelligence.
The liquid-cooled NVIDIA A100 GPU is the first in a line of GPUs. Picture: NVIDIA.
A really less energy-consuming technology?
In the long term, Nvidia wants to extend liquid cooling to other sectors such as in car on-board computers. This announcement suggests that the technology will be made more accessible to the general public.
For now, individuals can buy liquid cooling units to install on already existing GPUs. It is possible that the next generation of graphics cards will directly integrate this system. The manufacturer plans to release next year a liquid-cooled version of its H100 Tensor Core GPU, more efficient than the A100, and which will be used for machine learning of artificial intelligences.
Data centers account for 1% of global electricity consumption. Some specialists explain that producing less energy-intensive hardware solutions will never be as effective as reducing energy consumption in general. This involves generalizing the use of renewable energies to permanently power the servers.
Liquid cooling will also have to deal with the lack of water in the future. Microsoft has tried another method than that of Nvidia: plunging the servers into a liquid bath. The reduction in energy consumption goes up to 15% and according to the researchers involved in the project this technique reduces the use of water. In 2019, Google data centers consumed 8.7 billion liters of water in three states in the United States.