Enhancement of an Open Compute Project (OCP) server thermal management and waste heat recovery potential via hybrid liquid-cooling

A multiphysics Simulation-Driven Design approach has been undertaken to augment the OCP Leopard Server thermal management and heat recovery hardware with the Nexalus hybrid liquid-cooled sealed server technology. Independent testing at the RISE Research Institute of Sweden has proven up to 98% heat recovery is achievable at water temperatures up to and exceeding 65°C. The improved design could maintain the elevated water temperature over a range of CPU workloads, ranging from 8% to 75%. Importantly, the design solution achieves this within an architecture that is IOU in height, half that of the original stock 20U server, potentially doubling the compute density of a rack.