Liquid Cooling: The New Norm for Data Centers?
Findings from the Global Data Center Liquid Cooling Market Research Report
Data centers are becoming bigger, denser, and more numerous. As data centers evolve, so do their cooling needs. A recent report by Research & Markets tracks the projected rise of liquid cooling following the data center industry’s growth, positing that the global data center liquid cooling market will grow from USD 2.1 billion in 2022 to USD 6.4 billion by 2027 at an annual rate of 24.8%.
Other takeaways from the report:
Higher intensity applications, greater need for cooling
According to the report, the demand for liquid cooling will be driven by the need for efficient, noise-free, and compact cooling solutions, as well as higher processing power, low operating expenditure, and emergent technologies like blockchain, cryptocurrency mining, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The market for services associated with liquid cooling solutions, including consulting, designing, installation, deployment, and maintenance, will also grow accordingly.
Development of various cooling methods
From air-liquid hybrid cooling to full fluid immersion, many different cooling technologies are being utilized and developed to address various needs in the data center industry. The report projects that the widest-used method will be cold plate liquid cooling, which transfers heat from surfaces with high heat loads, such as processors and accelerators, to the fluid used within a liquid cooling system. Out of all the current cooling methods, it most effectively enhances data center energy efficiency, lowers total costs, and produces less noise.
Biggest adopters of liquid cooling
The highest adoption rate of liquid cooling will be observed in data center facilities that occupy a space under 25,000 square feet, primarily used by small to medium enterprises, which are easy to retrofit liquid cooling solutions.
Meanwhile, the largest market share in the liquid cooling market will be attributed to hyperscale data centers, which are business critical infrastructure for major CSP companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and others. These massive facilities have a highly dense computing capacity and require more extensive cooling solutions to maintain ambient operating temperature.
IT and Telecom are another quickly growing segment in need of liquid cooling, driven by new technologies like virtual and augmented reality, 5G, IoT, artificial intelligence, deep learning, and machine learning. The emergence of 5G edge computing applications and private cellular networks will likely lead to higher density, higher performance data centers, and thus greater cooling needs.
Global demand and regional breakdown
Participating companies in the data center liquid cooling market report span across various tiers and regions. The highest number of participants belong to Tier 2 and 3 (40% for both groups) and are from North America (45%), Asia Pacific (25%), and Europe (20%). The report projects that Asia Pacific will be the fastest-growing market for liquid cooling due to increasing demand for cloud applications. The region is seeing a strong shift towards cloud technologies which enable organizations to be faster, leaner, and better at delivering services to their customers.
Staying ahead of above stated global trends, Aivres is developing products integrated with various cooling technologies that deliver cutting-edge performance while keeping energy efficiency in mind.