Improvement in Server Compute Performance Using Advanced Air Cooled Thermal Solutions

Continuously increasing demand for higher compute performance is pushing for improved advanced thermal solutions. In high performance computing (HPC) area, most of the end users deploy some sort of direct or indirect liquid cooling thermal solutions. But for the users who have air cooled data centers and air cooled thermal solutions are challenged to cool next generation higher Thermal Design Power (TDP) processors in the same platform form factor without changing environmental boundary conditions. This paper presents several different advanced air cooled technologies developed to cool high TDP processors in the same form factor and within the same boundary conditions of current generation processor. Comparison of thermal performance using different cooling technologies such as Liquid Assist Air Cooling (LAAC) and Loop Heat Pipe (LHP) are presented in this paper. A case study of Intel’s Knights Landing (KNL) processor is presented to show case the increase in compute performance due to different advanced air cooling technologies.