- Cooling prices surge as Nvidia pushes energy limits throughout successive rack generations
- Compute trays dominate bills resulting from rising chilly plate necessities and thermal density
- Change tray financial savings can not offset escalating calls for from high-power GPU trays
The price of protecting Nvidia’s high-end rack methods cool continues to climb as every era pushes deeper into excessive energy ranges.
A Morgan Stanley report obtained by @Jukanlosreve reveals the liquid cooling {hardware} contained in the GB300 NVL72 prices $49,860, roughly sufficient to purchase a brand new Tesla Model Y.
The report further estimates the liquid cooling system required for the newer Vera Rubin NVL144 configuration will approach $55,710, a 17% increase.
The economics of tray-level cooling
This platform depends on hotter Rubin GPUs rated at as much as 1,800W per unit, together with next-generation NVSwitch 6.0 elements.
The price for cooling this technique is linked to the person compute trays, and every compute tray will want higher-capacity chilly plates.
The price per compute tray is predicted to rise by 18% to about $2,660 – and for the reason that Vera Rubin NVL144 system has 18 trays, the whole compute-side cooling expense reaches roughly $47,880.
The rise comes from higher-capacity chilly plates, which climb to $400 per unit as CPUs and GPUs push thermal limits.
In the meantime, swap tray cooling seems much less burdensome, falling to $870 per tray and totalling $7,830 per rack.
Nonetheless, this discount is overshadowed by the a lot bigger soar on the compute aspect, as the associated fee trajectory follows a sample: the transition from GB200 NVL72 noticed a 20% rise in cooling calls for for GB300 NVL72.
Equally, the transfer from GB300 NVL72 to the Vera Rubin NVL144 provides one other 17%. The ability ranges clarify this pattern.
Every Blackwell Extremely data center GPU attracts 1,400W, a Grace CPU takes 300W, and reminiscence contributes 200W per socket.
As workloads escalate, the worth of precision cooling grows simply as quick, however future methods will additional compound this. Nvidia plans a shift to Rubin Extremely GPUs that will attain a thermal design energy of three,600W per bundle, and assembly that requirement might drive new varieties of chilly plates or extra aggressive cooling methods.
Nvidia can be making ready the liquid-cooled NVL576 “Kyber” system, which can embrace 144 GPU packages, and can ship increased efficiency than the Vera Rubin NVL144, whereas carrying an excellent higher cooling invoice.
Though the ultimate greenback quantity just isn’t confirmed, high-capacity plates able to eradicating 3.6kW of warmth will clearly exceed the present $400 per unit.
This sends a sign that future knowledge middle installations will face even steeper thermal bills.
Through Toms Hardware
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