New Server Cooling Tech Promises "Unlimited Density"

A new liquid cooling technology for servers is getting attention through a test deployment at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).

According to the manufacturer, Flometrics, the "Cool-Flo" system relies on an outdoor cooling tower and indoor pump and can be deployed at rack level and direct-to-the-chip. Flometrics claims that the system is so efficient that it can allow data centers to achieve "practically unlimited density", lower CPU temperatures by up to 30 degrees Celsius and reduce overall power consumption by 25 to 30 percent.

Few technical details about the cooling system were provided, but it uses a negative pressure pump that eliminates leaks, a pistonless pump system that primes immediately and lasts for more than five years. The system also allows data center engineers to remove individual servers from a system without encountering liquid drips.

According to Calit2, Cool-Flo "is based on rocket-cooling technology and utilizes a pump developed with a grant from NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program."

Its inventor, Flometrics CEO Steve Harrington, is a part-time instructor in UCSD’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department. There was no information when the technology could be commercially available.

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Wolfgang Gruener is a contributor to Tom's IT Pro. He is currently principal analyst at Ndicio Research, a market analysis firm that focuses on cloud computing and disruptive technologies, and maintains the conceivablytech.com blog. An 18-year veteran in IT journalism and market research, he previously published TG Daily and was managing editor of Tom's Hardware news, which he grew from a link collection in the early 2000s into one of the most comprehensive and trusted technology news sources.

See here for all of Wolfgang's Tom's IT Pro articles.

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