By Braden Cooper, Product Marketing Manager
The most powerful artificial intelligence computing hardware is designed to thrive in a datacenter environment where there is uncapped clean power, near limitless cooling capacity, and a vibration-free environment. The growth of AI use cases in vehicles including automated crop management, autonomous long-haul freight, and military ISR aircraft necessitates the use of datacenter-oriented hardware in vehicles – particularly for initial developments while more customized size, weight, and power (SWaP) optimized embedded platforms are developed. The transition from friendly environmental conditions to the rigors of the road require system designs which mitigate the thermal, structural, and other challenging environmental conditions of the transportable application. The thermal design is in a critical state – with the latest AI-oriented GPUs and CPUs reaching heat flux densities never before seen. Advanced thermal management designs provide a path to solving the heat flux challenge – but each come with advantages and disadvantages in implementation. This infographic highlights some of the methods which can be used to cool systems in AI transportable applications.
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The best cooling method depends on many variables – from heat flux density to the SWaP constraints. With these existing technologies and ongoing industry innovation – powerful enterprise hardware can be used to solve the most demanding AI transportable challenges. The next few years are pivotal in the advancement of thermal management within datacenters – as immersion cooling and improved thermal interface materials see wider adoption. Transitioning these same cooling methods to AI Transportables solves the need for higher compute capacity at the location of data generation.
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The rugged edge computing landscape is becoming increasingly complex with new generations of technologies, such as the latest AI focused GPUs, releasing annually rather than every 2-3 years. Whether the end application is commercial or defense, rugged edge servers must not only deliver cutting-edge compute performance but also withstand extreme environmental conditions.
When the PCI-SIG formally added support for 675W add-in card devices in the PCI Express Card Electromechanical (CEM) specification in August 2023, NVIDIA’s most powerful CEM GPU, the NVIDIA H100 80GB had a maximum power consumption of 350W. While some devices were starting to push the limits of datacenter thermodynamics – high density systems of many 675W devices seemed like a distant reality. However, with power constraints uncapped and the need for higher performing GPUs skyrocketing, the industry quickly came out with devices taking full advantage of the new specification capability. NVIDIA quickly replaced the H100 80GB with the H100 NVL, increasing power density to 400W. While this small jump was manageable for existing installations, NVIDIA then dove all-in with the H200 NVL released in late 2024 at 600W. The rapid transition from 350W to 600W has put power and cooling technologies in the spotlight in a race to solve this next generation challenge.
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