Equinix expands deployment of advanced liquid cooling technology to more than 100 data centers worldwide.

Equinix today announced plans to expand support for advanced liquid cooling technologies, including direct-to-chip, to more than 100 International Business Exchange® (IBX®) data centers located in more than 45 metros worldwide.

As data center densities have increased in recent years, demand for liquid cooling solutions, which are efficient cooling systems, has increased. Equinix said that this expansion will allow “more companies to provide the most effective cooling technology for powerful, high-density hardware that supports compute-intensive workloads, including AI.”

Equinix’s liquid cooling technology is a technology that cools liquid through an in-rack heat exchanger in the data sensor to air. Equinix supports major liquid cooling technologies, including direct-to-chip and rear-door heat exchangers, to enable customers to utilize the most efficient solution. Equinix also provides a vendor-neutral approach that allows customers to use their preferred hardware supplier for deployment.

Direct-to-chip is a proprietary cooling method that installs a cold plate on top of the chip inside the server. This cold plate has liquid inlet and exhaust channels that allow the cooling liquid to pass through the cold plate and remove heat from the chip. Servers that support direct-to-chip can be installed in standard IT cabinets while applying innovative cooling technology, and can also utilize existing air-cooling technology. The rear heat exchanger uses cooling coils and fans to capture the heat generated by air-cooled IT equipment. By mounting directly in the cabinet used by the customer, it can manage higher cooling loads than existing cooling methods.

“The hardware required to run data-intensive, high-performance applications like AI is driving increased densities inside data centers, which can no longer be cooled efficiently using existing technologies,” said Sean Graham, research director for Cloud to Edge Datacenter Trends at IDC. “Data center providers like Equinix must be able to support next-generation cooling solutions.”

Equinix is supporting the commercialization of direct-to-chip liquid cooling in more than 45 major cities, including London, Silicon Valley, Singapore, and Washington, D.C., providing direct access to an ecosystem of partners and suppliers. “Continuing this approach, Equinix is committed to empowering digital leaders to continue to advance next-generation liquid cooling designs,” the company said.

“Liquid cooling is revolutionizing the way data centers cool the powerful, high-density hardware that powers emerging technologies, and Equinix is at the center of this revolution,” said Tiffany Osias, vice president of global colocation at Equinix. “Equinix has been supporting enterprises with significant scale-outs of liquid cooling systems across a range of sizes and densities for years. “Equinix has the experience to support complex modern IT deployments required for applications like AI,” he said.

“Liquid cooling was a key part of the development of the Open19 V2 specification. The goal of the Open19 project, hosted by the Linux Foundation, was to create an open standard that is suitable for all 19-inch racks for servers, storage and networking,” said My Truong, President, Singapore Semiconductor Association (SSIA) and Field Chief Technology Officer, Equinix. “This project will enable digital leaders to efficiently and sustainably use hardware from a variety of vendors in any data center environment. Equinix’s technology and vendor-neutral approach to liquid cooling removes the friction that can occur when deploying advanced liquid cooling solutions in enterprise data centers.”

“For next-generation chips and other AI infrastructure, traditional air cooling simply isn’t enough. Liquid cooling delivers better performance while saving energy and making data centers more efficient,” said Steve Walton, CEO of CoolIT Systems. “Equinix’s state-of-the-art data centers provide the ideal environment for customers to deploy their cutting-edge liquid cooling technology, ensuring optimal resiliency, energy efficiency and reliability for their mission-critical digital infrastructure.”

“Data centers need effective cooling solutions to keep up with the rapidly evolving world of computing,” said Erez Freibach, co-founder and CEO of ZutaCore. “Liquid cooling is a critical enabler of next-generation digital infrastructure,” said Jutacore. “Jutacore is working with Equinix at our joint innovation facility and Equinix Metal™ deployment to support large-scale development, operations and testing of next-generation liquid cooling solutions. We are excited to see Equinix expand its liquid cooling-enabled data centers as they continue to optimize their customers’ workloads with waterless liquid cooling and advance the carbon-free data industry.”