Microsoft: New data center design optimizes AI tasks, with zero water to cool

Steve Solomon, Vice President, Datacenter Infrastructure Engineering, Microsoft (MSFT) wrote in an earlier release: “This summer, we released our Datacenter Community Pledge, detailing our commitment to the local economies and communities in which we operate our datacenters. Protecting local watersheds is an important part of this pledge-especially in areas where water stress is growing. Beginning in August 2024, Microsoft launched a new datacenter design that optimizes AI workloads and consumes zero water for cooling. By adopting chip-level cooling solutions, we can deliver precise temperature control without water evaporation. While water is still used for administrative purposes like restrooms and kitchens, this design will avoid the need for more than 125 million liters of water per year per datacenter.These new liquid cooling technologies recycle water through a closed loop. Once the system is filled during construction, it will continually circulate water between the servers and chillers to dissipate heat without requiring a fresh water supply…”