Universal Cold Plates for Direct-to-Chip Cooling

This technical report investigates the feasibility of universal cold plates designed for both single-phase and two-phase cooling methods in data centers. The study highlights the transition from traditional air cooling to liquid cooling, particularly in the context of high power processors used in artificial intelligence applications. It outlines the experimental setup, including the thermal test vehicle designed to evaluate the performance of the cold plates under different cooling modes. The results indicate that two-phase cooling significantly outperforms single-phase cooling, even when using cold plates optimized for single-phase applications. The report emphasizes the importance of material compatibility and structural integrity for the universal cold plates, which could ease the transition to more efficient cooling technologies over the next few years. The findings suggest that stakeholders in the data center ecosystem can benefit from adopting universal cold plates as they prepare for the increasing cooling demands of future processors.