46 ELECTRIC.IE • The Magazine & Website for the Irish Electrical Industry • Rittal Ireland Rittal enables AI with megawatt cooling Last year’s OCP Global Summit theme was "From Ideas to Impact". This reflects OCP’s commitment to fostering innovation that transforms theoretical discussions into real-world solutions. One such example is generative AI. AI applications promise revolutionary benefits through 2025 and beyond. But is the IT infrastructure ready yet? The power density for applications such as the training and operation of large language models (LLMs) or high-performance computing will rapidly push current conventional air cooling to its physical and economic limits. Hence, cooling is about to undergo a radical technology change that will affect the entire data centre as a system. In close cooperation with hyperscalers and server OEMs, Rittal has developed a modular cooling distribution unit (CDU) that delivers a cooling capacity of over 1 MW. The CDU uses direct liquid cooling based on water – and is thus an example for new IT infrastructure technologies that are enablers for AI applications. New technology, familiar handling? “To put the technology into practice, it is not enough to simply provide the cooling capacity and integrate the solution into the facility - which also still poses challenges”, says Lars Platzhoff, Head of Rittal’s Business Unit Cooling Solutions : “Despite the new technology, the solutions must remain manageable by the data centre team as part of the usual service. At best, this should be taken into account already at the design stage.” ർ Rittal has developed a modular cooling distribution unit (CDU) that delivers a cooling capacity of over 1 MW. It uses direct liquid cooling based on water – and is thus a perfect example for new IT infrastructure technologies which are enablers for AI applications. ർ New technology made manageable: Rittal used Open Rack V3, OCP principles and modularization to design their CDU in such a way that the modules fit to the usual handling of servers. ർ Outlook: liquid-to-liquid solutions will become more and more the standard, while liquid-to-air solutions will still remain for existing data centres without facility water at row level. OCP as a model for usercentred design How does this work? With modularisation and the design advantages of the Open Rack V3, the development of which Rittal has driven forward in the Open Compute Project (OCP): Following the OCP design
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