UK industrial lubricant expert Castrol recently launched a brand-new direct-to-chip cooling fluid, which is engineered to address the exceptionally high thermal demands of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance data centres.
Dubbed “Castrol ON Direct Liquid Cooling PG 25”, the new product is a propylene glycol-based coolant designed specifically for use in computing data centres where direct-to-chip cooling is critical. The fluid chips are ready to use and provide premier levels of protection against prevalent problems such as bacterial growth and corrosion.
Global Vice President for thermal management at Castrol, Peter Huang, commented:
“As data centres continue to push the boundaries of computing power, direct-to-chip cooling offers an opportunity for data centres to manage the increasing thermal demands of next-generation processors.”
Direct-to-chip coolant systems supply liquid cooling directly to computer components that generate heat, offering faster heat transfer and decreasing the dependence on energy-hungry air conditioning (AC) systems.
Statistics show that take-up of these dedicated cooling systems is mixed. In 2023, a global survey found that around 56 per cent of data centre operators continued to employ air cooling for the highest-density cabinets on onsite. However, analysts anticipate that the direct-to-chip cooling market will displace traditional methods of air cooling throughout the remainder of the decade because of its capacity to cope with heat levels generated by machine learning, AI and higher-performance computing.
A report from Omdia research projected that the market for global data centre cooling will hit $16.8 billion by the year 2028, with direct-to-chip coolants taking a substantial share.
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