In The Arena by TechArena - JetCool's Innovative Liquid Cooling Tech Powers High-Performance AI

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

JetCool Founder & CEO Bernie Malouin discusses the company’s breakthrough liquid cooling tech, which targets processor hotspots with jets of coolant to boost efficiency across intensive workloads.

Welcome to the Tech Arena, featuring authentic discussions between tech's leading innovators and our host, Alison Klein. Now, let's step into the arena. Welcome in the arena. My name is Alison Klein, and today we're coming to you from the OCP Summit in San Jose, California, and I am with Bernie Maloan, founder and CEO of JetCool. Bernie, welcome to the show. Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. So Bernie, this is the first time that JetCool has been on the show, so why don't you go ahead and just introduce

yourself and tell us a little bit about JetCool. Yeah. So JetCool is originally from MIT, where we were developing cooling technologies. Actually, not for computing at all. It was largely for aerospace applications. Oh, wow. We like to say that we were cooling 1,000-watt devices before anybody cared about 1,000-watt devices. But then we thought we could do more with the technology. So about six years ago, we spun it off from MIT, the at-home JetCool technologies, to focus on the data center cooling, advanced chipsets, high power levels. And really what Jack Cool does is we're a directed chip liquid cooling technology. Inside of our cold plates, we have arrays of tiny fluid jets. And so we work directly with the

major chip makers, the Intel's, the AMD's, the Nvidia's of the world to understand where the hotspots are in the individual silicon. And then we architect arrays of tiny fluid jets to target those hotspots directly. And what that does is allows us to be much higher performance in the higher powers, but also be much more efficient. That makes a whole lot of sense. And it seems really simple, but I think you guys are the only ones that are doing that. I think that I have seen so many liquid cooling companies when I've been walking around the expo floor.

It's crazy. It's like the OCP summit should just be called the OCP cooling summit. But the season of liquid cooling is definitely very much upon us because of AI. What do you think sets JetCool apart? Well, it really comes down to the performance from our patented approach of using these arrays of tiny fluid jets and targeting hot squads.

That allows us to cool very high power processors. And today we're cooling 1,500, 2,000 watt processors in a single socket. Super chips over 3,000 watts. And that allows us to do some really creative things that allows us to help feed the future of compute and the future of AI. Now, why do you think, and you talk to a lot of companies, why do you think that this is the moment for liquid? And how do you see customers adopting liquid? Because there are choices to make in terms of the adoption. How do you see that playing? We've focused on the single-phase approach for liquid cooling, right? And at JetCool, we actually offer a couple of different ways to get started with liquid cooling, right? And at JetCool, we actually offer a couple of different ways to get started with

liquid cooling with our single phase cooling approach. So we have some solutions that are geared toward existing data centers. So those are more brownfield applications. We do that through our partnership with Zelle and others. But that allows you to get started with a completely self-contained liquid cooling technology. And that gives you everything that you need for liquid cooling inside of the server itself. So you get a lot of the performance and sustainability benefits of liquid cooling. But you can deploy it in any ARCOOL data center. So that's been a really popular thing for us to get those customers into liquid cooling.

And then it offers the ability to migrate toward the full facility level. You know, in the future, we see everybody going towards the facility level liquid cooling. I think the power levels and the efficiency levels are really driving that. But this is a nice stepping stone. And then those kits can be converted to the facility level liquid cooling. I think the power levels and the efficiency levels are really driving that. But this is a nice stepping stone. And then those kits can be converted to the facility level liquid cooling if you choose to use a CDU-based approach. Jet Cool just unveiled a brand new CDU line

here on the show, capable of 300 kilowatt wraps. Wow. So industry leading there, and that allows for solutions at any stage of deployment integration, whether you're an existing facility or building a brand new. Now you guys just released an amazing announcement with Flex. Flex was recently on the show. We published that earlier today, and they are so bullish about this

technology. It was incredible. This was a huge development at OCP, probably one of the biggest announcements that was made heading into this conference. Why did you choose them as a strategic partner, and what does this collaboration deliver to your customers? That's crazy to hear. that was made heading into this conference. Why did you choose them as a strategic partner and what does this collaboration deliver to your customers? That's crazy here. You know, Plex is a great partner for us. Plex has a great portfolio of products and services that covers 80% of the data center.

And we're excited to work with them for our collaboration for both co-developments and for supply chain global manufacturing. And allows us to scale very quickly doing custom designs for servers for hyperscalers at scale. It allows JetCool to really bring our technology to more markets very quickly, developing customized solutions, fully integrated solutions from server to facility, all with a global reach. And that's, I think, really important.

That's something that a lot of our customers are asking for today. Now, you've thrown out some figures in terms of how dense of systems you can cool. Where do you see power density headed? And what did you hear from your customers about what they want to see in terms of the amount of power that can be dealt with within a rack? The power trends are only going up right now, right? We've seen that with a lot of the new releases from just about all of the major chip makers. Looking forward, where do I see it going?

I think there's clearly the acceleration going on right now. And when we think about rack powers, I expect there to be a plateau in that 100 to 150 kilowatt racks space. I think that's going to be a very popular market standpoint for a little while. There'll be performance busters that are going to be pushing that two to 300 kilowatt racks. And that's going to be driving a lot of performance. Fortunately, JetCool has you covered for both as we can offer the full cold plates all the way through to CDU solution covering those 300 kilowatt racks. Now, if there's one topic that can get some chemists at OCP going, it's the topic of dielectrics and people debating dielectrics. Tell me about how you view dielectrics. Does JetCool have its own dielectric? Are you

utilizing a dielectric? What is the story here? Yeah, so JetCool has really focused on single phase, PG25 phase foods. And that's because that's becoming the de facto industry standard. I think just about all of the major deployments that we see are with PG-25 fluid. So we've stuck with that. It has better thermal performance than the single-phase immersion approaches, immersion fluids. And it also avoids some of the uncertainty and question marks around some other two-phase fluids, particularly the questionable PFAS-based fluids. I've got to ask, I was in your booth, I was over at Flex's booth, talking about the jets and how you're shooting your dielectric around.

Tell me exactly how you actually move the fluid so that it is delivered precisely to where those hot spots are. Yeah, it's a detailed process that Jekyll goes through when we develop new cooling solutions. And we take really the precision approach to liquid cooling. So we go through a design with the chip makers to make sure we understand where all those hotspots are. We're in a pumped system, so using RCD or other liquid infrastructure provides the fluid to our system. And we have these arrays of little tiny fluid jets that are hitting those hotspots. In a typical cold plate

for us, there'll be somewhere between 600 and 800 tiny fluid jets, like a single computer processor. So we have to make sure that we balance all of those things to make sure that we're hitting the right spots with the proper operational characteristics. Now, I know a lot of customers are looking for ways to actually take that heat and use it for different purposes. Have you been working with customers in that space, or where do you see the future going? Absolutely. That's been very popular in Europe. We're seeing actually more of it now in North America too. But heat reuse is becoming a real thing. You can take that heat, which you're going to use that electricity anyways in the computing, and then do something else constructed with it. That's a big win for everybody. We're seeing a lot of interest in that. Jetco plays particularly

well in there because we have the thermal ability to cool with very warm coolants. You know, it's hard to have heat reuse when you're using a coolant that's 30 or 35 C. All of a sudden with jet cool, we're enabling 50, 55 C. We have deployments with national labs that are 65 C for air-cooled temperatures. And that creates a coolant medium. And now you can do some real things with that heat reuse. That's been very popular for us from municipalities, from airports, from district heating, all the way to greenhouses, growing produce with the waste heat. So I just need a data center next to my house and I can get rid of my utility bills while you're sending them.

You know, data centers aren't as bad of a neighbor as they were. That's exciting. I mean, they don't have a lot of employees inside a data center, so you wouldn't have to worry about parking. One question about JetCool that I have is I know that you position yourself as a sustainable company. Can you talk a little bit about that and why it's important? It's really important to us and I think that kind of pervades everything that we do at JetCool. We see with the power demands of AI and the proliferation of AI and GPUs, we have to be very responsible with the electricity that we use because there's a lot of it going towards computing. So at JetCool, that actors in two ways. Our cooling solutions are designed to be electrically efficient. We use the least amount of pumping power

and be able to reuse some of the heat to reduce the electricity consumption of those data centers. And also on the sustainability side, make sure that we're using sustainable materials. Things like the fluid trace will factor into that very heavily when we use water-based solutions instead of some of the more engineered chemicals. Very nice. Now, one final question for you, Bernie. First of all, it's been a pleasure talking to you.

I am very excited about what you guys are doing. And when I saw the announcement with Flex and that really stands out, I think that you can achieve scales that will really take your technology everywhere. So that's great. Where can folks find out more about the company, about what you're doing and engage with your team? Talk about a trial or a deployment. Absolutely. Reach out to us directly at JetCool.com. Take a look at what we've got going on.

You can also find JetCool through various OEMs or through our partners like Plex. Awesome. Thanks so much for being on the program today. Taking some time out of your busy schedule. Thank you for having us. Thanks for joining the Tech Arena. Subscribe and engage at our website, thetecharena.net. All content is copyright by the Tech Arena.