Huajin Securities released a research report saying that under the strong demand for computational power in large model training and inference, the power density of GPU servers will increase dramatically, putting higher demands on cooling equipment and technology in data centers.
The Zhitong Finance App learned that Huajin Securities released a research report saying that under the strong demand for computational power in large model training and reasoning, the power density of GPU servers will increase dramatically, thus placing higher demands on cooling equipment and technology in data centers. Traditional air cooling technology faces bottlenecks in high heat density scenarios. Liquid cooling technology has characteristics such as ultra-high energy efficiency and ultra-high heat density, and may be a necessary choice for temperature control solutions for intelligent computing centers. Currently, cold plate liquid cooling is the most widely used, and it is expected to form a first-mover advantage in liquid cooling solutions in intelligent computing centers. Furthermore, according to IDC, China's liquid cooling server market will grow at a compound annual rate of 54.7% from 2022 to 2027, and the market size will reach 8.9 billion US dollars in 2027.
It is recommended to focus on targets: Invec (002837.SZ), Shenling Environmental (301018.SZ), Tongfei (300990.SZ), Jialitu (603912.SH), Runze Technology (300442.SZ), Gaolan (300499.SZ), and Shuguang Digital Innovation (87808.BJ).
Incident: Recently, at the 2024 SIEPR Economic Summit, Nvidia CEO revealed that the next generation of DGX GPU servers will use liquid cooling to dissipate heat, and said that the next generation of DGX servers will soon be launched. In the same month, Xinyisheng announced the launch of an immersive 800G optical module to enter the liquid cooling market at the OFC2024 conference.
The main views of Huajin Securities are as follows:
Intelligent calculation creates immediate demand for liquid cooling, and the 10 billion liquid cooling market explodes
Under the strong demand for computational power for large-scale model training and inference, the power density of GPU servers will increase dramatically, putting higher demands on refrigeration equipment and technology in data centers. Traditional air cooling technology faces bottlenecks in high heat density scenarios. Liquid cooling technology has characteristics such as ultra-high energy efficiency and ultra-high heat density, and may be a necessary choice for temperature control solutions for intelligent computing centers. International Data Corporation (IDC) released the latest “China Semi-Annual Liquid-Cooled Server Market (First Half Year 2023) Tracking” report. The data shows that China's liquid-cooled server market will continue to grow rapidly in 2023. China's liquid-cooled server market reached US$660 million in the first half of 2023, an increase of 283.3% over the previous year, and is expected to reach US$1.51 billion for the full year of 2023.
In addition, IDC also predicts that China's liquid-cooled server market will reach a compound annual growth rate of 54.7% from 2022 to 2027, and the market size will reach 8.9 billion US dollars in 2027.
Liquid cooling can significantly improve the cooling efficiency of data centers. Three major advantages helped promote cold plate liquid cooling first
Liquid cooling refers to a technology that uses liquid instead of air as a refrigerant to transfer heat to heat generating components and take away heat. Depending on how the coolant contacts the heating device, it can be divided into indirect liquid cooling and direct liquid cooling. Indirect liquid cooling refers to a heat transfer process where there is no direct contact between the server's heat source and coolant. It is mainly cold plate liquid cooling technology. Direct liquid cooling refers to a cooling method where the heating component comes into direct contact with the coolant, including immersion and spray liquid cooling technology.
Currently, cold plate liquid cooling is the most widely used. It is expected to form a first-mover advantage in intelligent computing center liquid cooling solutions. It mainly has three advantages: 1. Strong compatibility. When selecting coolant, only compatibility issues between the coolant, circulation lines and cold plates can be considered. The cost of transformation is relatively low, and there is no need for large-scale transformation of the data center computer room. 2. Good heat dissipation effect. The cooling effect and energy efficiency are far better than air cooling. For traditional rack-mounted air-cooled servers, the resource utilization rate has been significantly improved. 3. Low cost/high reliability. The application of cold plate liquid cooling technology has replaced high-cost water-cooled units. At the same time, the liquid does not come into direct contact with the equipment, and the reliability is higher.
Cold plates are the core components of cold plate liquid cooling, and strong customization requires joint development with manufacturers
Cold plate liquid cooling mainly transfers the heat of components to the cooling liquid enclosed in the circulation pipe through the cold plate, and then uses the cooling liquid to take away the heat. The cold plate liquid cooling system mainly consists of a cooling tower, CDU, primary side & secondary side liquid cooling pipelines, cooling medium, and liquid cooling cabinet; the liquid cooling cabinet contains liquid cooling plates, liquid connectors, liquid dispensers, etc. Cold plates are the core components of cold plate liquid cooling technology and are usually made of materials with high thermal conductivity, such as copper or aluminum. The cold plate usually has a series of small channels through which liquid flows, comes into contact with the cold plate and absorbs heat. The degree of customization of cold plates is high. The liquid cold plate production line and process are not standard. The design of liquid cold plates is not the same, and joint development is required with manufacturers with technical experience.
The liquid cooling industry is involved in many ways, and China's liquid cooling manufacturers are flourishing
Representative manufacturers in the field of liquid cooling include Invec, Gaolan Co., Ltd., Tongfei Co., Ltd., Shenling Environmental, Jialitu, and Shuguang Digital Innovation. The midstream mainly consists of liquid-cooled servers, chip manufacturers, and liquid-cooled integrated facilities, modules and cabinets. The downstream mainly consists of data center users, including the three major telecom operators and third-party IDC companies.
At present, Invict has launched Coolinside liquid cooling cabinets and full-chain liquid cooling solutions for computing power equipment and data centers. Related products include cooling sources, pipeline connections, CDU distribution, quick couplings, manifolds, and cold plates.
Gaolan's information and communication (ICT) thermal management products are mainly cold plate liquid-cooled server thermal management solutions, and container liquid-cooled data center solutions. They cover everything from components such as liquid cold plates, various models and forms of heat transfer, multi-power tanks, multi-size containers, etc., to system integration for data center design, equipment integration, system debugging, and equipment operation and maintenance.
The first standardized liquid cooling data center built by Shuguang in China has continued to operate steadily for more than 2,500 days, and Shuguang Digital's liquid cooling solutions have also been deployed in many cities across the country. The total construction scale of liquid cooling data centers exceeds 260 MW; Runze Technology delivered the industry's first complete pure liquid cooling intelligent computing center in 2023.
Risk warning: due to objective factors, construction progress falls short of expectations; implementation of local policies is slow; industry transformation progress falls short of expectations.