Amongst NVIDIA’s slate of bulletins tonight at Computex 2022, the corporate has revealed that it’s getting ready to launch liquid cooled variations of their high-end PCIe accelerator playing cards. Being provided as an alterative to the standard dual-slot air cooled playing cards, the liquid cooled playing cards are available a extra compact single-slot kind issue for each improved cooling and improved density. The liquid cooled A100 can be obtainable in Q3, and a liquid cooled H100 can be obtainable early subsequent 12 months.
Whereas liquid cooling is way from new within the datacenter, it’s sometimes been reserved for extra bespoke {hardware} with excessive cooling and/or density necessities, such because the upcoming technology of high-end NVIDIA H100 (SMX) servers. PCIe servers, in contrast, are all about standardization and compatibility. Which for server video playing cards/accelerators means twin slot playing cards designed to be used with pressured air cooling inside a server chassis. This serves the market phase properly, however the 300 to 350 Watt TDPs of those playing cards signifies that they will’t get any thinner and nonetheless be successfully cooled by air – which in flip creates a 4 card restrict for traditional rackmount programs.
However occasions are altering, and liquid cooling is being applied in datacenters in better capacities each to maintain up with cooling ever-hotter {hardware}, and to enhance general datacenter power effectivity. To that finish, NVIDIA can be releasing liquid cooled variations of their A100 and H100 PCIe playing cards with a view to give datacenter clients a straightforward and formally supported path to putting in liquid cooled PCIe accelerators inside their services.
The playing cards (pictured above) are primarily a reference A100/H100 with the standard dual-slot heatsink changed with a single-slot full protection water block. Designed to be built-in by server distributors, they use an open loop design that’s meant for use as half of a bigger liquid cooling setup.
However apart from altering the cooling system, the specs of the playing cards stay unchanged. NVIDIA isn’t growing the TDPs or clockspeeds on these playing cards, so their efficiency must be equivalent to conventional air cooled playing cards (as long as they’re not thermally throttling, in fact). Put one other manner, these new playing cards are utilizing liquid cooling to enhance power effectivity and density, quite than efficiency.
The primary card out of the gate would be the liquid cooled model of the 80GB A100 PCIe accelerator. That can be obtainable to clients in Q3 of this 12 months. In the meantime a liquid cooled model of the H100 PCIe can be beneath improvement, and NVIDIA expects that to be obtainable in early 2023.
Within the interim, NVIDIA has been working with Equinix with a view to qualify the liquid cooled A100 inside their datacenters, in addition to to get an thought of the real-world energy financial savings of the brand new {hardware}. Curiously, NVIDIA is reporting a big discount in general datacenter energy utilization from switching to liquid cooling – a 2000 server (4000 A100 card) setup noticed its complete energy wants drop by 28%. In response to NVIDIA, that is from a mixture of general energy financial savings throughout the datacenter from the swap, together with every part from improved video card power effectivity from decrease temperatures, to decreased power wants from cooling water versus working giant air chillers. All of which underscores why NVIDIA is selling liquid cooled {hardware} as an influence effectivity achieve for datacenter operators who need to trim energy utilization.
And whereas this primary technology of liquid cooled {hardware} is concentrated on effectivity, in accordance with NVIDIA that gained’t at all times be the case. For future generations of playing cards the corporate will even be taking a look at liquid cooling to enhance efficiency at present power ranges – presumably by investing the datacenter-scale features again into greater TDPs for the playing cards.
Lastly, whereas the majority of NVIDIA’s announcement immediately (in addition to the case examine) is concentrated on PCIe playing cards, NVIDIA can be revealing that they’ve been engaged on official, liquid cooled designs for his or her HGX programs as properly, that are used to deal with the corporate’s extra highly effective SMX playing cards. A liquid cooled HGX A100 is already transport, and a liquid cooled HGX H100 is slated to be launched in This fall.
