NVIDIA Blackwell's High Energy Consumption Promotes Demand for Water-Cooling Heat Dissipation
TapTechNews July 31st news, TrendForce of TrendForce Consulting released a blog post yesterday (July 30th) stating that the high energy consumption of NVIDIA Blackwell promotes the demand for heat dissipation, estimating that the penetration rate of the water-cooling heat dissipation scheme will reach 10% by the end of 2024.
Ever-increasing power consumption
The NVIDIA Blackwell platform will be officially mass-produced in 2025, replacing the existing Hopper platform and becoming the main solution for NVIDIA's high-end GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), accounting for nearly 83% of the overall high-end products.
In AIServer models such as B200 and GB200 that pursue high efficiency, the power consumption of a single GPU can reach more than 1,000 watts. Each HGX model is equipped with 8 GPUs, and each NVL model has 36 or 72 GPUs per cabinet, and the increase in energy consumption will boost the development of the AIServer water-cooling heat dissipation supply chain.
TrendForce Consulting said that the thermal design power (TDP) of server chips continues to increase, such as the TDP of the B200 chip will reach 1000 watts, and the traditional air-cooling heat dissipation scheme is not enough to meet the needs; the TDP of the GB200 NVL36 and NVL72 whole cabinets will even be as high as 70 kW and nearly 140 kW, and a water-cooling scheme is required to effectively solve the heat dissipation problem.
Water-cooling supply chain
In the initial stage of the GB200 NVL36 architecture, it will mainly be a parallel scheme of air-cooling and water-cooling; because NVL72 has a higher heat dissipation capacity requirement, in principle, a water-cooling scheme is preferred.
TapTechNews cited the report on the water-cooling heat dissipation supply chain of the GB200 cabinet system, mainly including 5 major components:
Water-cooling plate (ColdPlate)
Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU)
Manifold
Quick Disconnect (QD)
RearDoor Heat Exchanger (RDHx)
CDU is one of the key systems, responsible for regulating the flow rate of the coolant to the entire system to ensure that the cabinet temperature is controlled within the preset TDP range.
TrendForce Consulting observed that currently for the NVIDIA AI solution, Vertiv (Vertiv Technology) is the main CDU supplier, and Qisda, Aavid (Thermalloy), Delta Electronics and CoolIT are continuously tested and verified.
In the case of NVIDIA vigorously expanding the CSPs customer group, it is estimated that the combined shipping quantity of GB200 converted to NVL36 in 2025 is expected to reach 60,000 cabinets, and the usage quantity of Blackwell GPUs of GB200 is expected to reach 2.1-2.2 million.