The benefits of closed-loop liquid cooling for optical networks
With today’s hyperconnected lifestyle, data demand continues to escalate, further compounded by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) across nearly every aspect of our daily lives. As the AI market heats up, so do the networks and data centers designed to support AI applications – literally. In fact, it’s estimated that data center power consumption will increase 160 percent by 2023, largely due to the growth of AI. This trend is driving the need for more sustainable technologies, such as liquid cooling for optical networks.
In reality, dealing with power and thermal management issues is nothing new for network operators and data center managers. Greater levels of miniaturization and integration are steadily increasing the amount of heat generated by optical network equipment. Moreover, these systems are being concentrated into an ever smaller footprint due to space constraints. This growing thermal load puts more pressure on network components, as well as on the traditional air-cooled systems designed to keep the equipment cool.
Thermal management challenges
As optical network equipment becomes smaller and more powerful, to manage its increasing thermal load, air cooling requires much larger heat sinks and fan capacity, impacting the size and power consumption. This not only drives up power consumption, but constantly higher speeds fans operation tend to reduce the lifespan of equipment and increase maintenance, leading to higher overall operating costs. Plus, the noise generated by these fans inside central offices and data centers is deafening.
This legacy approach to managing thermal load inside data centers and data center interconnect (DCI) networks is not sustainable – in more ways than one. The lack of energy efficiency means that sustainability targets and net-zero initiatives cannot be achieved as power consumption continues to skyrocket. Furthermore, network operators and data centers face ongoing competitive pressure to reduce cost per bit and boost overall power efficiency, requiring a more sustainable business model with lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and greater return on investment.
Optical network liquid cooling
It’s clear that a more sustainable thermal management approach is needed in order to reduce thermal load, decrease energy consumption and improve overall optical networking efficiency. To that end, Fujitsu developed a breakthrough closed-loop liquid cooling technology that is both efficient and sustainable, offering twice the thermal efficiency of conventional air-cooled systems.
The 1FINITY™ T900 Series Transponder is the only available optical transponder platform to incorporate closed-loop liquid cooling, enabling sustainable thermal management without altering existing systems. This patented liquid cooling technology provides energy savings on two fronts. First, liquid cooling provides far better heat transfer than pure air cooling, allowing equipment to maintain a lower operating temperature. Second, the system itself consumes less energy, reducing costs.
This closed-loop liquid-cooled technology also enables much longer fan life. Because fans run much more slowly, the T900 Series Transponder platform delivers higher reliability and greater sustainability, reducing power consumption while creating much less noise. Moreover, this translates into reduced maintenance, such as less frequent cleaning or replacement of fan filters – a significant improvement because dirty filters can shut down an entire group of transponders.
Liquid cooling architecture for a sustainable tomorrow
The T900 Series Transponder platform is based on advanced liquid cooling developed to handle even the most intense thermal load of the world-leading Fugaku supercomputer, which has a heat generation density that can top 100 kW per square meter. Incorporating closed-loop liquid-cooled architecture in a compact modular chassis, the T900 platform operates much like a radiator, dissipating heat. And with maintenance-free connections and various interconnecting hot-swappable plug-in units (PIUs), this platform enables simplified installation without changing the operating environment or operating procedures.
Ultimately, to maintain competitiveness, DCI network operators and data centers must reduce power consumption and streamline operational efficiency, even as they scale their network capacity. The T900 Series Transponder platform helps them achieve this with reliability, sustainability and a lower TCO.
To learn more about closed-loop liquid cooling for optical networks, watch this informative video:
