Intel will build an elaborate 'mega-lab' to test new cooling technologies

Intel will build an elaborate 'mega-lab' to test new cooling technologies

Intel is set to inject €700 million into a new "mega-lab" focused on building next-generation liquid immersion cooling technology.

The 200,000-square-foot building will break ground later this year at the company's Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro, Oregon, and is scheduled to open in late 2023.

Immersion cooling allows servers and other IT components to be immersed in liquid dielectric, eliminating the need for expensive data center air conditioning.

What will the lab do?

In addition to immersion cooling, the lab will also conduct research on water use efficiency and heat recovery and reuse.

Additionally, Intel said the lab will work on qualifying, testing and enabling Intel’s data center and dedicated hosting portfolio, including Intel Xeon, Intel Optane, network interfaces and switches, Intel Agilex FPGAs, Xe architecture, Habana accelerators and other future products in development.

The new lab will also house an "Advanced Technology Showcase" that will allow customers and partners to observe and test Intel products in a variety of data center environments in the lab.

In addition, Intel also released a liquid immersion cooling solution and open intellectual property (Open IP) reference design.

Intel said the design will allow partners to accelerate the introduction of Intel solutions in response to the trend of increasing data center power density.

The initial solution and proof-of-concept design will be done in partnership with Intel Taiwan and will be deployed throughout the Taiwanese ecosystem in a phased approach, with plans for global deployment.

Data center sustainability remains a hot topic.

Data centers account for about 1% of global electricity demand and about 0,3% of global carbon emissions, according to Intel's own statistics.

Fueled by growth during the Covid-19 pandemic, data center revenues are set to reach $948.000 billion by the end of the decade, according to forecasts by data and analytics firm GlobalData.