The Newly formed Thermal Management Special Interest Group is chaired by Dr Jon Summers from RI.SE.

Today there are literally millions of traditional air-based cooling systems in data centres and server rooms of all shapes and sizes around the globe and given their prevalence this is unlikely to change for many years to come. There is no shortage of research going into the optimisation of these air-based systems as the pressure to increase performance and energy effectiveness continues to grow. This has resulted in the development of not only free air cooling, which increases in popularity where external environmental conditions allow, but also a comprehensive range of indirect hybrid solutions that offer even greater flexibility and potential cost savings. Increased environmental pressures have also seen research and development increase into the prospects of harvesting and reusing the waste heat produced by the server/compute components.

Simple physics dictates that at some point an air-based system, irrespective of however efficient you make it, will be challenged by implementation practicalities. As processing speeds and power densities continue to steadily rise, there is an increasing interest in the adoption of liquids as the thermal energy transfer medium, which includes technologies based on direct to chip/CPU cooling through to fully Immersed and double immersed liquid cooling solutions.

One thing you will quickly learn is that “No one solution fits all applications” and as a result, unless you know exactly what you need, the landscape quickly becomes confusing. The Thermal Management Special Interest Group has been formed to assist consumers with understanding their options so more informed decisions on what is best for your own business needs can be made.