LiquidStack launches modular liquid cooling solutions for the edge

Immersion cooling specialist LiquidStack has introduced a pair of modular data center units using immersion cooling for edge deployments and advanced cloud computing applications.

The units are called the MicroModular and MegaModular. The former contains a single 48U DataTank immersion cooling system (the size of a standard server rack) and the latter comes with up to six 48U DataTanks. The products can offer between 250kW to 1.5MW of IT capacity with a PUE of 1.02. (Power usage effectiveness, or PUE, is a metric to measure data center efficiency. It’s the ratio of the total amount of energy used by a data center facility to the energy delivered to computing equipment.)

The PUE cited for the MicroModular and MegaModular is nothing short of astonishing. According to the Uptime Institute, the average PUE in a data center is 1.50, meaning for every dollar spent on powering the equipment in the data center, the company spends another $.50 to cool it. With a PUE of 1.02, that means you spend two cents to cool a dollar’s worth of electricity.

Immersion cooling is creeping into the mainstream of data center technology. For the longest time, it was on the fringe, only used in the most extreme cases. After all, dunking your IT equipment in a dialectic liquid bath seemed an extreme measure for some. But with this announcement, LiquidStack is advancing the technology and bringing it to the edge, rather than the data center where it has traditionally been used.

MicroModular and Mega Modular are designed specifically for AI and advanced cloud computing applications. They were designed in cooperation with Trane Technologies, an HVAC solutions company that invested in LiquidStack earlier this year. Both new products use Trane’s heat rejection and reuse technology.

“As demand for AI escalates, higher compute densities are emerging. This combined with an increase in demand for AI at the Edge makes liquid immersion cooling attractive. Traditional air-cooling doesn’t scale well in prefabricated data centers and has much lower thermal conductivity than liquid,” said Joe Capes, CEO of LiquidStack in a statement.

MicroModular is designed for local edge applications, while MegaModular is meant for larger, regional edge applications. Both are ruggedized for harsh environments while at the same time are considered turnkey and rapidly deployable. Installation can occur within weeks in comparison to months needed to deploy brick-and-mortar data centers

The two units are designed for a wide range of use cases, including telecommunications, colocation, high-performance computing, hybrid cloud and small enterprise. LiquidStack modular products are also well-suited for retrofitting existing data center infrastructure.

The modular solutions are available for order now and will ship in January 2024.