Major technology corporations such as Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta are channelling billions into data centre infrastructures to bolster generative AI, which is causing a spike in energy demand.
Sustainable Metal Cloud has announced that its immersion cooling technology is 28% less expensive to install compared to other liquid-based cooling methods and can cut energy use by up to 50%.
The surge in artificial intelligence has increased the need for more robust processors and the energy to cool data centres.
This presents an opportunity for Sustainable Metal Cloud, which runs ‘sustainable AI factories’ consisting of HyperCubes located in Singapore and Australia.
These HyperCubes house servers equipped with Nvidia processors immersed in a synthetic oil known as polyalphaolefin, which is more effective at dissipating heat than air. The company claims this technology can reduce energy consumption by as much as 50% when compared to the conventional air-cooling systems found in most data centres.
Additionally, the Singapore-based company states that its immersion cooling technology is more cost-effective to install by 28% than other liquid cooling options. The HyperCubes are modular and can be integrated into any data centre, utilising spaces that are currently unoccupied within existing facilities.
What is a Hypercube?
- Structure: A hypercube topology connects nodes in a way that each node is connected to others in a manner similar to the geometric hypercube. For example, in a 3-dimensional hypercube (a cube), each node is connected to three other nodes.
- Scalability: This structure allows for efficient scaling. As the number of dimensions increases, the number of nodes that can be connected grows exponentially.
- Fault Tolerance: Hypercube networks are known for their robustness. If one connection fails, there are multiple alternative paths for data to travel, ensuring reliability.
Benefits in data centres
- High Performance: The multiple pathways in a hypercube network reduce latency and increase data transfer speeds, which is crucial for big tech companies handling vast amounts of data.
- Efficient Resource Utilisation: The topology allows for better load balancing and resource allocation, optimising the performance of data centres.
- Flexibility: Hypercube networks can easily adapt to changes in the network, such as adding or removing nodes, without significant reconfiguration.
- Big Tech Companies: Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft likely use hypercube topologies in their data centres to ensure high performance and reliability.
- High-Performance Computing (HPC): Hypercube networks are also used in supercomputers and other HPC environments where efficient data transfer is critical.