Two years after he spoke at a conference detailing his ambitious vision for cooling tomorrow's data centers, Ali Heydari and his team won a $5 million grant to go build it.
It was the largest of 15 awards in May from the U.S. Department of Energy. The DoE program, called COOLERCHIPS, received more than 100 applications from a who's who list of computer architects and researchers.
This is another example of how we're rearchitecting the data center, said Ali Heydari, a distinguished engineer at NVIDIA who leads the project and helped deploy more than a million servers in previous roles at Baidu, Twitter and Facebook.
We celebrated on Slack because the team is all over the U.S., said Jeremy Rodriguez, who once built hyperscale liquid-cooling systems and now manages NVIDIA's data center engineering team.
A Historic Shift The project is ambitious and comes at a critical moment in the history of computing.
Processors are expected to generate up to an order of magnitude more heat as Moore's law hits the limits of physics, but the demands on data centers continue to soar.
Soon, today's air-cooled systems won't be able to keep up. Current liquid-cooling techniques won't be able to handle the more than 40 watts per square centimeter researchers expect future silicon in data centers will need to dissipate.
So, Heydari's group defined an advanced liquid-cooling system.
Their approach promises to cool a data center packed into a mobile container, even when it's placed in an environment up to 40 degrees Celsius and is drawing 200kW - 25x the power of today's server racks.
It will cost at least 5% less and run 20% more efficiently than today's air-cooled approaches. It's much quieter and has a smaller carbon footprint, too.
That's a great achievement for our engineers who are very smart folks, he said, noting part of their mission is to make people aware of the changes ahead.
A Radical Proposal The team's solution combines two technologies never before deployed in tandem.
First, chips will be cooled with cold plates whose coolant evaporates like sweat on the foreheads of hard-working processors, then cools to condense and re-form as liquid. Second, entire servers, with their lower power components, will be encased in hermetically sealed containers and immersed in coolant.
Novel solution: Servers will be bathed in coolants as part of the project. They will use a liquid common in refrigerators and car air conditioners, but not yet used in data centers.
Three Giant Steps The three-year project sets annual milestones - component tests next year, a partial rack test a year later, and a full system tested and delivered at the end.
Icing the cake, the team will create a full digital twin of the system using NVIDIA Omniverse, an open development platform for building and operating metaverse applications.
The NVIDIA team consists of about a dozen thermal, power, mechanical and systems engineers, some dedicated to creating the digital twin. They have help from seven partners:
Binghamton and Villanova universities in analysis, testing and simulation
BOYD Corp. for the cold plates
Durbin Group for the pumping system
Honeywell to help select the refrigerant
Sandia National Laboratory in reliability assessment, and
Vertiv Corp. in heat rejection
We're extending relationships we've built for years, and each group brings an array of engineers, said Heydari.
Of course, it's hard work, too.
For instance, Mohammed Tradat, a former Binghamton researcher who now heads an NVIDIA data center mechanical engineering group, had a sleepless night working on the grant application, but it's a labor of love for all of us, he said.
Heydari said he never imagined the team would be bringing its ideas to life when he delivered a talk on them in late 2021.
No other company would allow us to build an organization that could do this kind of work - we're making history and that's amazing, said Rodriguez.
See how digital twins, built in Omniverse, help optimize the design of a data center in the video below.
Picture at top: Gathered recently at NVIDIA headquarters are (from left) Scott Wallace (NVIDIA), Greg Strover (Vertiv), Vivien Lecoustre (DoE), Vladimir Troy (NVIDIA), Peter Debock (COOLERCHIPS program director), Rakesh Radhakrishnan (DoE), Joseph Marsala (Durbin Group), Nigel Gore (Vertiv), and Jeremy Rodriguez, Bahareh Eslami, Manthos Economou, Harold Miyamura and Ali Heydari (all of NVIDIA).
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
13/05/2026
New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs
Joel Pennington May 13, 2026
0 Comments
New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...
13/05/2026
Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...
13/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...
13/05/2026
FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...
13/05/2026
Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...
13/05/2026
Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the latest developments on Nuke Stage. A purpose-built application for end-to-end virtual production and in-...
13/05/2026
A definitive portrait of one of Ireland's most influential musicians
New TV documentary airs Monday 18 May on RT One and RT Player at 9.35pm
Watch the...
13/05/2026
Agentic AI is changing the way users get work done. Following the success of OpenClaw, the community is embracing new open source agentic frameworks. The latest...
13/05/2026
Reinforcement-learning agents - AI systems that learn by trial and error - can c...
12/05/2026
Beyond the Hype: A Strategic Post-Hoc Analysis of NAB 2026 If NAB Show 2026 had an underlying theme, it was a quiet, industry-wide pivot from the high-energy sp...
12/05/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D), a Panoptec Technologies Group company, and CT Square, led by Chandresh Shah, have announced a joint venture to distribute G&D and V...
12/05/2026
With 30 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament in the United States, has announced th...
12/05/2026
The NHL has announced the return of Stanley Pup for its third consecutive year, a 90-minute special featuring adoptable rescue dogs competing on a miniature rin...
12/05/2026
NBCUniversal presented its 2026 Upfront to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, detailing upcoming programming across NBC, Peacock, Bravo, and Versant properti...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced funding for the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Publ...
12/05/2026
TNDV and Live Media, both divisions of Live Media Group, supported live broadcast coverage around NCAA Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, including the March M...
12/05/2026
The European Football Alliance (EFA) has announced a content distribution agreement with Fubo Sports Network, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel ...
12/05/2026
For the first time, Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. will have two separate tel...
12/05/2026
CP Communications led a comprehensive spectrum management initiative on behalf of Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week, coordinating RF assets across the ...
12/05/2026
LiveU has announced a strategic partnership with DRONERESPONDERS, a 501(c)3 non-...
12/05/2026
Open Broadcast Systems has announced that BMC TV, a specialist in IP transport of broadcast content, has selected the Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway solution...
12/05/2026
NEP Europe, part of NEP Group, has announced it will deliver broadcast solutions...
12/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced continued collaboration with Ravensbourne University ...
12/05/2026
Stats Perform has announced the launch of Opta Pulse, an AI-assisted video creation and distribution platform for leagues, rights holders, and broadcasters. The...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced a collaboration with Sesame Workshop to integrate Sesame Street characters into FOX Sports' FIFA World Cup 2026 programming. Conten...
12/05/2026
To date, NHL Productions has produced 19 broadcasts with commentary in American Sign Language
NHL in ASL (American Sign Language) may be just one show, but the...
12/05/2026
Google's Brian Albert: creators, athletes, highlights, nostalgia, second-scr...
12/05/2026
A still from Past Lives by Celine Song, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | p...
12/05/2026
Spotify is where fans and artists come together, turning discovery into somethin...
12/05/2026
Features patented Marco-MMC clocking technology
Black Lion Audio's latest release combines the company's expertise in clocking with their renowned p...
12/05/2026
New Track Panel, sequencer upgrades & more
Following their recent public beta release, Reason Studios have announced the full release of Reason 14. With the...
12/05/2026
One month to go! SBS reveals expansive FIFA World Cup 2026 lineup beyond the pi...
12/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz presents its advanced solutions for power electronics testing at...
12/05/2026
aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, has developed a modified fund raising p...
12/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/05/2026
Tyrell Corporation, specialists in high-end live sports and entertainment broadcasts, was tasked with delivering compelling broadcast coverage of premier equest...
12/05/2026
Registration is now open for IBC2026 as the global media, entertainment and technology community prepares to converge on the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September ...
12/05/2026
Ross Video, a global leader in live video production technology, will present its latest innovations and integrated production workflows at BroadcastAsia 2026, ...
12/05/2026
500 selected leaders from around the world across start-ups, corporates, and venture capital. Over 50bn in assets under management among attending investors, a...
Two years after he spoke at a conference detailing his ambitious vision for cooling tomorrow's data centers, Ali Heydari and his team won a $5 million grant to go build it.
