Sinolink: Responding to the AI chip cooling revolution, the future of 3D printed liquid cooling plates is promising.

Sinolink released a research report stating that according to data from the China Information Communications Research Institute, the market size of liquid cooling in China's intelligent computing center is expected to reach 18.4 billion yuan by 2024, with a year-on-year growth of 66%. It is further expected to reach 130 billion yuan by 2029, and the demand for liquid cooling market is expected to explode. 3D printing is expected to become the optimal technology route for manufacturing liquid cooling plates. Consideration should be given to companies with good technical reserves in metal 3D printing, especially copper 3D printing. Sinolink's main points are as follows: Cold plate liquid cooling is expected to become the mainstream heat dissipation solution for data centers. According to historical data, cooling alone accounts for 40% of the energy consumption of data centers. With the continuous increase in the heat design power consumption of GPUs, traditional air cooling heat dissipation is facing bottlenecks, while liquid cooling has a much higher heat dissipation efficiency than air cooling, especially when using microchannel liquid cooling ceiling, according to NVIDIA data, deploying the liquid-cooled GB200 NVL72 system can save over 4 million USD per year for a large-scale data center with 50 megawatts. According to data from the China Information Communications Research Institute, the market size of liquid cooling in China's intelligent computing center is expected to reach 18.4 billion yuan by 2024, with a year-on-year growth of 66%. It is further expected to reach 130 billion yuan by 2029, and the demand for liquid cooling market is expected to explode. Among them, cold plate liquid cooling is the most widely used liquid cooling method. As an indirect liquid cooling method, it conducts heat transfer through a closed cavity made of liquid-filled copper/aluminum conductive metals. Since the heating devices such as server chips do not directly contact the liquid, this system does not require a redesign of the entire data center equipment, making it more operable. Therefore, cold plate liquid cooling has the highest maturity and the widest application. 3D printing is expected to become the optimal technology route for manufacturing liquid cooling plates. 3D printing has manufacturing advantages that traditional machining does not have, especially suitable for the manufacture of liquid cooling plates. Common design schemes for liquid cooling plates include toothed, tubular, tortuous, needle-like, and microchannel designs, with toothed designs being the most common type in data center scenarios. 3D printing first liberates the flow channel design constraints. Flow channel design can be improved through topology optimization and biomimetic design complexification to enhance heat dissipation efficiency. The 3D printing process is insensitive to changes in structural design due to its layered manufacturing, while CNC/toothed machining is more restricted in this aspect. Traditional liquid cooling plates are mainly welded using brazing, diffusion bonding, and other processes to complete the welding. The structural strength and thermal resistance at the joints are weaker than the integration molding of 3D printing. Microchannel liquid cooling plates become a new trend, and the advantages of 3D printing are further enhanced. According to information from Suzhou Jinfu Technology, its developed 0.08mm microchannel liquid cooling plate has received orders from a Taiwanese customer and has been used in liquid cooling heat dissipation systems for B200 chips. The compatibility solution for the next generation B300 chips has also completed multiple rounds of sample testing with good feedback and is entering the production preparation stage. The trend is towards further enhancing heat dissipation performance through microchannel technology. Generally, heat exchangers with an equivalent diameter below 1mm are defined as microchannel heat exchangers. Due to the extremely small size and three-dimensional complex structure of microchannel liquid cooling plates (especially in order to achieve biomimetic flow channel design), traditional toothed, micro milling, micro-electrical discharge machining, micro stamping, and other manufacturing processes all have significant limitations, as they are limited by material thickness and the complexity of geometric structures. It is difficult to machine grooves with large aspect ratios and complex structures. The processing advantages of 3D printing will be further magnified, and problems caused by changes in the size of microchannel structures during welding processes can be avoided. Currently, the industry mainly processes them through toothed processes, which may transition to 3D printing technology in the future. Copper material printing is difficult but breakthroughs are possible, with the 3D printing of liquid cooling plates already in place in the industry. Copper is difficult to process due to its high reflectance to the red light wavelengths used by 3D printing equipment, but the industry has been using solutions with green and blue laser devices, which can significantly reduce the reflectance of copper. Currently, CoolestDC has developed an integrated cooling plate based on EOSDMLS technology and high-density EOSCopper CuCP technology, which can withstand water pressures of over 6 bar and lower the GPU operating temperature by nearly 50%. Fabric8Labs uses a unique electrochemical additive manufacturing (ECAM) technology to print high-precision cooling plates, which can achieve precise cooling of chip hot spots, with performance significantly higher than microchannel cooling plates using toothed technologies. Xihe Additive Manufacturing uses green light 3D printing technology to manufacture microchannel liquid cooling plates, with a minimum wall thickness of printed parts reaching 0.05mm and a density of over 99.8%. Overall, the industrialization of 3D printed liquid cooling plates is a growing trend. Risk warning: The promotion of new technologies may not meet expectations.