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Google's Liquid Cooling

(chipsandcheese.com)
399 points giuliomagnifico | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.224s | source
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michaelt ◴[] No.45017512[source]
> TPU chips are hooked up in series in the loop, which naturally means some chips will get hotter liquid that has already passed other chips in the loop. Cooling capacity is budgeted based on the requirements of the last chip in each loop.

Of course, it's worth noting that if you've got four chips, each putting out 250W of power, and a pump pushing 1 litres of water per minute through them, water at the outlet must be 14°C hotter than water at the inlet, because of the specific heat capacity of water. That's true whether the water flows through the chips in series, or in parallel.

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friendzis ◴[] No.45017973[source]
While there is some truth to your comment, it has no practical engineering relevance. Since energy transfer rate is proportional to temp difference, therefore you compute the flow rate required, which is going to be different if the chips are in series or in parallel.
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1. Dylan16807 ◴[] No.45034315[source]
If you're heating up the water by 10 or so degrees on typical computer hardware, I bet you're not bottlenecked by energy transfer. Your flow rate is based on how hot you want the water to get, so series or parallel goes back to not mattering.