Two-phase cooling prototype

HPC4AI at the Dipartimento di Informatica – Università degli Studi di Torino installed the first commercial prototype of a GPU-enabled server (Intel dual-socket + NVidia 4xH100SXM2 with evaporative cooling).
The prototype was designed within the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) TEXTAROSSA project, realised by a partnership between E4 Computer Engineering and In Quattro, and funded by FutureHPC spoke of ICSC – Centro Nazionale di Ricerca in HPC, Big Data e Quantum Computing led by Luca Benini (Università di Bologna) and Marco Aldinucci (Università degli Studi di Torino).
The prototype has a primary evaporative circuit and a secondary liquid-cooled circuit (then to internal air or external cooling). It is fully instrumented with hundreds of sensors (temperature, pressure, power, etc.) and implements a LabVIEW programmable cooling strategy. The prototype also includes a programmable heater of the secondary to test the machine on different operational settings.
The evaporator has been designed to dissipate up to 1000W per socket (>70W cm^2). We expect (and hope) two-phase cooling to overcome the efficiency of state-of-the-art liquid cooling, but not only. Two-phase cooling uses dielectric (green and innocuous) gas, so a broken pipe will not destroy anything, as might happen with liquid cooling. Pipes are thin and cheap since they work at low pressure since cooling happens via evaporation.
Ten universities and six large industries will be able to test the prototype within “FutureHPC” spoke of the ICSC – Centro Nazionale di Ricerca in HPC, Big Data e Quantum Computing