Schneider Electric and Motivair Unveil End-To-End Portfolio for AI Datacenter Cooling

Schneider Electric and Motivair together introduce a comprehensive end-to-end portfolio for liquid cooling tailored to AI datacenters.

The acquisition of Motivair by Schneider Electric was only completed at the end of February this year, but the two companies are not wasting any time. Schneider Electric and Motivair together present a comprehensive portfolio for liquid cooling. Schneider emphasizes that this is a true end-to-end offering, targeting both new datacenters and existing installations.

Wide Range of Offerings

Motivair brings five key components that together form a complete solution to the cooling challenge:

• The CDU or Coolant Distribution Unit: removes heat from the chips. The CDUs precisely remove the thermal load from AI chips. The solutions can already handle up to 2.5 MW, which is up to three times more than the heaviest loads that need to be cooled today.
• The HDU or Heat Dissipation Unit: this device takes the liquid cooling circuit from the CDU, extracts heat from the liquid and disperses it into the air. This is relevant for traditional datacenters without their own liquid cooling circuit with which the CDU can exchange heat. The HDU allows traditional datacenters to combine direct liquid cooling with conventional air conditioning.
• The air cooling isn’t going anywhere, they say. Today there is still a lot of air-cooled legacy and 10 to 30 percent residual heat is still to be expected. Motivair has traditional solutions for this in the form of an air heat exchanger at the back of the servers.
• The chiller uses air cooling and a closed water circuit to provide the datacenter with cool water or cool air. Schneider Electric and Motivair are not focusing on water evaporation because its impact is very significant. The closed loop air cooled chillers can benefit from ambient temperature and would save millions of liters of water.
• The TCS circuit or Technology System Cooling Loop is essentially the plumbing that ensures the pure coolant reaches the components at the right flow rate and pressure. Motivair and Schneider Electric have optimized them for current GPUs.

Motivair’s solutions complement Schneider Electric’s existing offering, which further expands the portfolio with prefab modules and reference designs. What Motivair does for cooling and coolant, Schneider does for electricity with racks, power distribution, UPS systems and more. All of this then integrates into the ecoStruxure platform, which brings everything together within software.

AI Infrastructure

The end-to-end offering is important in light of the growing demand for AI infrastructure in datacenters. The density per server and rack is growing strongly. Where 20 kW and air cooling used to be the norm, density is growing toward 240 kW per rack. Direct liquid cooling is part of the solution, power systems that can deliver the necessary electricity another.

Schneider Electric and Motivair are keen to highlight their experience in the sector. They have an impressive track record, with exascale computers Frontier, Aurora and El Capitan being cooled by Motivair systems.

Schneider Electric is now taking the time to showcase the integration of Motivair and emphasize the total offering that becomes available. The company hopes to be excellently positioned to play a significant role in building new AI datacenters and retrofitting older sites.