This White Paper provides a comprehensive overview of how single-phase direct liquid cooling manages the rising thermal demands of AI and high-performance computing, and how it compares with two-phase and immersion approaches.

What you will learn about:

• Why rising compute density has made heat the central design constraint in AI and high-performance computing, where individual processors now exceed 1,000 watts and racks dissipate more than 100 kilowatts.
• How semiconductors respond to excess heat through thermal throttling, and why maintaining thermal margin supports higher performance and longer hardware life.
• Why air cooling reaches its practical limit at high rack densities, and how liquid absorbs and carries away far more heat in a closed loop.
• How single-phase direct liquid cooling works at the chip and system levels, and how it compares with two-phase and immersion cooling.
• How processor power and rack density are expected to grow, and what these trends mean for the future of thermal design.

LOOK INSIDE

As computing systems move toward denser processors, tightly coupled server nodes, and higher-power racks, managing the heat they generate has become a defining challenge in data center design. Modern AI accelerators can dissipate well over 1,000 watts, and a single rack may release more than 100 kilowatts of heat. This is far beyond what air cooling can practically remove. Single-phase direct liquid cooling addresses this by circulating water or a water-glycol coolant through coldplates mounted directly on high-heat components. The coolant absorbs the heat and carries it away in a closed loop to a coolant distribution unit. Because liquid stores far more heat than air and removes it much faster, this approach supports higher chip and rack densities within a smaller footprint. This paper explains how single-phase direct liquid cooling works, how it compares with two-phase and immersion cooling, and how rising processor power and rack density are shaping the future of thermal