KUL Extreme is an Open RAN liquid cooling solution resulting from a close collaboration between Iceotope, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Intel, and nVent to support far edge computing across the entire data center estate. Applications in these workloads require ultralow latency and high scalability to process large volumes of data close to where the data is generated, often in remote locations. The product significantly reduces energy consumption and delivers a sustainable solution across distributed workloads, for both telco service providers and enterprises.
Created with the most demanding workloads in mind, KUL Extreme is a fully integrated, standardized solution that offers greater sustainability, energy efficiency, and serviceability for server generations to come. The modular design of KUL Extreme is highly configurable to enable rapid scalability across all types of deployments. From a single server at a cellular base station to a ruggedized solution for the far edge to an enterprise-grade data center, each KUL Extreme unit can easily be dropped into place at any location. The solution supports both high-performance liquid- and air-cooled devices while optimizing serviceability and simplifying maintenance across the data center estate.
KUL Extreme was designed for a variety of data center and edge computing applications, including:
- High-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads that require high computing power and efficient cooling.
- Edge computing where space is limited and traditional air-cooled servers may not be suitable.
- Far-edge deployments where servicing devices is costly and minimizing on-site maintenance is key.
- Cloud computing environments that require high computing power, high-density server deployment, and efficient cooling.
The KUL Extreme is a versatile precision liquid-cooled server platform that can be used in various applications where high-performance computing, density, and energy efficiency are required.
Iceotope, HPE, and Intel have a long-term partnership focused on addressing sustainability, serviceability, and scalability at the edge. With a deep understanding of the needs of data centers and enterprises operating at the edge, the companies worked together to create KUL Extreme to be capable of delivering more compute power to facilitate 5G, AI, and IoT use cases. Research for the project focused on addressing the challenge of not only powering the computer systems themselves, but creating an innovative solution for powering the cooling systems to solve the overall energy efficiency problems edge data centers face.
As part of their combined research, Iceotope, Intel, and HPE have benchmarked the power consumption of a sample IT installation being cooled respectively using air and precision immersion liquid cooling. The results show a substantial advantage in favor of liquid cooling, including massive energy savings of up to 30%, a significant uptick in processing performance and reliable server operations at full throttle.
The laboratory tests also showed the Iceotope precision liquid-cooled system enabled a 4% increase in server performance at elevated temperatures. The liquid cooling systems also consumed 1 kW less energy at rack level than its air-cooled counterpart, representing a 5% energy savings in the IT equipment alone. Assuming a typical cooling power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.4 in air and 1.04 in liquid-cooled data centers, data center cooling power using liquid is now only 0.7 kW — a figure 1/10 of the air-cooled system. Total power consumption is now 19.3 kW, more than 8 kW less than the air-cooled system,
The product development process involved combining the best tech from all four companies (Iceotope, HPE, Intel, and nVent). The resulting design integrates Iceotope’s KUL Extreme chassis with high-performing HPE ProLiant DL110 Telco servers that are workload-optimized for RAN. The technology also incorporates Intel's latest processor technology and nVent’s flexible and modular portfolio of racks and enclosures, altogether creating a custom, scalable solution for remote environments. The sustainable solution can be used by both telco service providers and enterprises across distributed workloads, including high-performance computing, edge computing, cloud computing, financial services, and scientific research.
