The Chemours Company has achieved a significant milestone as its OpteonTM two-phase immersion cooling fluid has been officially qualified by Samsung Electronics for use with the company’s fourth-generation solid-state drives (SSDs). This approval highlights the growing importance of immersion cooling technology in addressing the increasing energy and performance demands of data centers, particularly those driven by advancements in artificial intelligence and semiconductor technology.
Collaboration and Testing Efforts
The qualification comes after nearly a year of extensive performance testing, marking the first instance where Samsung has approved a two-phase immersion cooling fluid for its hardware. Samsung is set to commence testing for next-generation SSDs, including the fifth and sixth generations, in the upcoming months. Chemours collaborated closely with Samsung, alongside Liquid Stack, a manufacturer of immersion tanks, and PKI Corporation, a provider of semiconductor and data center solutions. Together, they conducted performance testing using a full-scale 48U immersion cooling tank.
The rigorous trials demonstrated that the OpteonTM fluid showed no degradation and confirmed its compatibility with Samsung’s systems. “Collaborating with Samsung has enabled us to get an even deeper understanding of the evolving digital infrastructure needs and the unique value of our OpteonTM two-phase immersion cooling fluid,” said Denise Dignam, President and CEO of Chemours. She emphasized that this innovative technology supports higher IT loads, reduces equipment failures, and significantly lowers energy and water consumption, resulting in cost savings for operators.
Meeting New Cooling Standards
Samsung underscored the importance of ensuring compatibility as the demands for cooling solutions grow due to AI and high-performance computing. “Finding innovative solutions to effectively cool IT hardware, without creating compatibility or performance issues, is no simple task,” stated Sungki Lee, Project Leader of SSD HW Reliability Engineering at Samsung. “After nearly a year of testing, the OpteonTM two-phase immersion cooling fluid met or exceeded all compatibility parameters.”
In addition to the qualification of the OpteonTM fluid, Samsung developed a high-reliability test standard based on benchmarks from the Open Compute Project (OCP) to evaluate immersion cooling systems. The OpteonTM fluid is the first solution to meet this standard, paving the way for broader qualification across Samsung’s product lines, including memory semiconductors and logic devices.
OpteonTM immersion cooling technology offers substantial efficiency advantages over traditional cooling methods. The technology can reduce data center energy consumption by up to 40%, cooling energy use by up to 90%, and nearly eliminates water usage. Furthermore, it may decrease space requirements by 60%, while achieving a power usage effectiveness (PUE) close to 1, a benchmark in energy-efficient operations.
The qualification of Chemours’ OpteonTM fluid enhances the company’s position in the expanding liquid cooling market and signifies a major step towards implementing sustainable cooling solutions for data centers globally. This advancement aligns with the industry’s urgent need for innovative cooling methods to support evolving technology landscapes.
