Techzine TV podcast

Ferveret brings nuclear cooling to data centers

• Coen or Sander • Season 3 • Episode 18

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0:00 | 33:44

What if the best way to cool a data center was to boil the liquid sitting on top of your servers? Reza Azizian, co-founder of Ferveret, joins us to explain how his company is bringing nuclear reactor heat transfer physics to AI data centers. This should make it possible to get up to 35% more compute from the same power envelope.

Ferveret has developed a chassis-level, rack-mountable immersion cooling system called Adaptive Phase Cooling. Unlike traditional immersion tanks that require infrastructure overhauls, Ferveret units drop into existing direct-to-chip rack infrastructure, require no PFAS fluids, operate near atmospheric pressure, and cool the entire rack. The result is a PUE as low as 1.03 and a return on investment measured in roughly one year, Azizian says.

Azizian walks us through the journey from MIT nuclear engineering research to designing cooling for Microsoft HoloLens and NVIDIA GPUs, the physics behind sub-cooled boiling, why air cooling is hitting its limits under Moore's Law, and how the company sees the future of AI data centers.

Key takeaways:
• Ferveret uses sub-cooled boiling (Adaptive Phase Cooling), not full two-phase immersion, eliminating pressure buildup and fluid loss
• Chassis-level form factor fits existing rack infrastructure
• PFAS-free fluid used for electronics cleaning, available off the shelf
• Benchmarks on H200 and Blackwell show ~15% teraflop-per-watt improvement vs. direct-to-chip
• System operates at 45°C liquid inlet temperature, enabling free cooling and eliminating chillers
• Full-rack liquid cooling (compute, networking, power) achieves PUE of 1.03–1.04
• From the same power envelope, up to 35% more compute output is achievable
• ROI approximately one year; cost comparable to direct-to-chip at scale
• Go-to-market through ODMs and OEMs for full-rack shipments
• Scalable beyond 600 kW per rack with no current cooling capacity ceiling observed

Chapters:
0:01 - Introduction: Ferveret and the science of boiling
1:28 - From nuclear reactors at MIT to data center cooling
2:55 - Designing cooling for HoloLens and NVIDIA GPUs
3:56 - Why air cooling is hitting its limits
7:21 - The problem with traditional immersion cooling
8:42 - Adaptive Phase Cooling: the sub-cooled boiling innovation
9:54 - PFAS-free fluid and the proprietary heat exchanger
13:21 - Power efficiency: 15% more teraflops and 35% more compute
23:41 - Go-to-market: partnering with ODMs and OEMs
27:38 - Is AI a bubble? Market outlook and future data center trends
30:35 - Silicon photonics, scalability, and cooling beyond 600 kW per rack