UT researchers develop thermal interface material for improved chip cooling

• Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have created a new “thermal interface material” that could organically remove heat from high-powered electronic devices, which they claim could reduce or even eliminate the need for extensive cooling.

• The new material, made from a mix of liquid metal and aluminum nitride, is said to be much better at conducting heat than current commercial materials, making it optimal for cooling.

• The new material, published in Nature Nanotechnology, can reportedly remove 2,760 watts of heat from a small area of 16 square centimeters – when coupled with microchannel cooling. UT said the technology can cut the energy needed for the cooling pump by 65 percent.

Aquatherm pioneers efficient, responsible data center cooling solutions

• November 6th to 7th, 2024,at the annual DCD>Connect event, Aquatherm CTO Jim Paschal participated in a presentation and answer questions about polypropylene piping’s application in cooling large data centers.

• Aquatherm has already applied its piping solutions to multiple data centers across the United States.

• Aquatherm products are designed to meet requirements of the Open Compute Project for hygienic piping, ensuring compliance and reliability in high-performance environments.

• Aquatherm’s direct-to-chip cooling systems also enhance thermal management while supporting carbon neutrality goals.

Design strategies in the white space ecosystem

• Adapting design for high-density applications：The rapid rise of AI and high-density computing is transforming data center white space, especially in cooling, cabling, and power delivery. Traditional data center designs are being redesigned to handle the demands of high-density setups, where more equipment is packed into smaller spaces.

• Cooling requirements：In the past, water near sensitive hardware was avoided at all costs. Now, liquid cooling has become a necessity, with water being brought right to, and even into, the racks to support growing density needs.

• Cabling challenges：With more power and data cabling in each cabinet, careful design is essential to maintain airflow, as excessive cabling can obstruct fan intakes, leading to overheating and potentially significant operational issues.

Microsoft to spend $10bn on CoreWeave by end of decade

• According to a report from The Information, CoreWeave told investors that it had recently signed a contract with Microsoft that would see the tech giant use CoreWeave’s data centers to run AI models.

• OpenAI, which currently relies exclusively on Microsoft Azure for its cloud infrastructure, recently announced it was looking to other data center providers besides Microsoft and in June, it was reported that the company signed a deal to take up compute capacity at an Oracle data center in Abilene, Texas, being developed by Crusoe.

• CoreWeave was founded in 2017 as a cryptomining firm but now offers access to GPUs for AI applications. In October 2024, it was reported that CoreWeave had closed a $650 million financing deal with a credit facility led by the likes of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley.

Tessolve acquires Germany-based Dream Chip Technologies in $45.8m all-cash deal

• Indian semiconductor engineering company Tessolve has acquired Dream Chip Technologies for $45.8 million. Tessolve said the all-cash deal would bolster its system-on-chip (SoC) design capabilities in the AI, automotive, and data center markets.

• Founded as Sican in 1990, the company was acquired by Infineon in 2000 and again by Silicon Image in 2006. It underwent a management buyout in 2010, renaming itself Dream Chip Technologies, and, according to the company, became Germany’s largest independent chip design company in 2014.

SolarBank expands into data center sector

• North American renewable developer SolarBank has announced an expansion into the data center sector.

• The company will seek opportunities as a developer, owner, and strategic partner in data center infrastructure to meet the growing demand for sustainable energy solutions within the sector.

• The company has a development pipeline of 1GW and has successfully developed 100MW of operational renewable capacity.

• SolarBank has announced several solar projects in 2024. Earlier this week, plans were revealed to develop a 3.1MW ground-mount solar power project in Nova Scotia.

• In total, the company has announced plans to develop 12 solar projects across North America in 2024.

Swiss industrial group Datwyler gets new data center

• Swiss industrial group Datwyler has built a new data center to expand its computing capacity.The data center is located at the Datwyler headquarters in Altdorf, Switzerland, and has increased the company's compute capacity from 36 cores to a 256-core cluster.

• The data center was developed with the assistance of CADFEM, a simulation specialist and partner of Ansys. According to Datwyler, prior to the optimization with CADFEM, only two simulation or HPC calculations were possible simultaneously on 12 cores each, and if parallelization was necessary this was even less.

• The data center can be used around the clock by employees in Switzerland and wider Europe, and can be accessed remotely from locations in the US and China.

Aurum Equity Partners launches $1bn tokenized equity and debt fund for data center invesment

• Aurum Equity Partners has launched a $1 billion combined equity and debt tokenized fund for investment in data centers.The fund will use Zoniqx's asset tokenization solutions and will use the XRP Ledger (XRPL), an open-source and decentralized Layer 1 blockchain for real-world asset (RWA) tokenization.

• The fund will be used to develop data centers in the US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, India, and Europe.

• This is intended to make the trading of tokenized assets on secondary markets more efficient and give investors improved liquidity options, and enable Aurum to expand its investor base.

Italy’s ENEA selects Lenovo for new HPC cluster

• Italy’s National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) has chosen Lenovo for its new HPC cluster, dubbed CRESCO8.

• It consists of 758 nodes with 2 Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ CPUs, meaning the cluster will bring the compute power of CRESCO (Computational Center for Research on Complex Systems) from its current 1.01 petaflops to more than 6.5 petaflops.

• By using Lenovo Neptune Direct Water-Cooling technology, ENEA said it has been able to capture up to 98 percent of the heat produced by the supercomputer. It also noted that because all the Lenovo hardware used for the installation was entirely made in its factory in Hungary, the infrastructure hasn’t had as far to travel, reducing transport emissions.