Iceotope partnered with Intel and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to develop a liquid-cooled server ideal for the extreme conditions of telecom edge deployments. These vendors' KUL RAN offering combines Intel's 4th-generation Xeon processors, HPE ProLiant DL110 servers and Iceotope's liquid-cooling technology to reduce network energy consumption by up to 40%, Iceotope Chief Commercial Officer Nathan Blom told SDxCentral.

From the CFO point of view at any major telco, even a 1% reduction in energy use is material to the operator's bottom line. "It becomes worthy of millions of dollars annually for every percentage of energy that I save," Blom said. "When we're talking up to 40%," that's a "significant savings" that will "materially change the operating income of any telco or tower provider," he said.

At harsh or extreme edge sites located far from metropolitan areas, the biggest issues are the variance of ambient temperatures and existence of particulate matter in the air (like dust or debris), which render air-cooled server deployment less than attractive. "You're having to move air around and suck things inside the chassis, which could potentially cause failures, and you're having a difficult time monitoring and maintaining a constant thermal signature inside the chassis," Blom said.

Core service events are another challenge for telecom edge sites in terms of overall cost and time spent on maintenance. "When you have to send someone who is highly trained and highly technical out on a three-hour journey or a five-hour journey to a remote location to get [the site] back up and running, it can cost thousands and thousands of dollars per event," he explained. "The easier and faster you can make the service event happen, of course, is economically more viable for the telcos."

Although these types of harsh edge environments don't make up the majority of a telco's network sites, they are "infinitely more valuable," Blom argued. Operators may be required by government regulation or by their coverage map to reach remote locations, and "it's the cost per site that becomes important for telcos" despite smaller edge footprints.

Another key roadblock to telco edge deployment is the limited amount of electricity that can be sent to each extreme edge site. "The wires that literally are pulled over the poles – they get there, but they just don't have enough electrons inside them to do what it is that we're asking [of] our 5G networks – and, probably soon, our 6G networks," Blom noted. In an ideal world, each electron sent over those wires would be used for compute rather than ancillary functions like cooling.

Traditional air-cooling is associated with an increase in greenhouse gasses (GHG) and carbon emissions, especially as artificial intelligence (AI) modeling and workloads require additional CPU and GPU power. "Everything is starting to go up and up and up," Blom said. "We need to think about how we're going to reduce energy consumption. If we can do that in a ruggedized and modular way, it means we can be scalable outside on the extreme edge."

To address these industry-wide challenges, Iceotope partnered with Intel and HPE to create "an ultra-resilient, highly energy-efficient design" based on Iceotope's precision liquid-cooling technology and "the idea that you don't need to provide serviceability at the edge," Blom said.

Iceotope's KUL RAN units are hot swappable, meaning highly trained technicians don't need to travel to remote locations for maintenance. Instead, "truck driver technicians" capable of unplugging two wires and plugging them back into a new unit can transport the units to a cleanroom environment for servicing. This design – a contained single node in a traditional chassis – offers a substantial advantage compared to immersion cooling tank environments that are "foreign to all of us and very difficult to service," he added.

Dell'Oro Research Director Lucas Beran explained that KUL RAN thermal management relies on direct liquid cooling, capturing a majority of generated heat by pumping a dielectric fluid directly to the processor. Any remaining heat resulting from the server's ancillary components is captured with a partially immersed motherboard, which "creates a near 100% heat capture solution," he told SDxCentral. Heat is then rejected from the back of the server without requiring any water infrastructure.

This offering, however, likely carries a steeper price tag compared to other air- or liquid-cooled edge servers. But "considering the total cost of ownership or sustainability benefits of this solution, I would expect a favorable outcome relative to other air-cooled solutions, and possibly other liquid cooled solutions as well," Beran noted.

While KUL RAN is marketed with specific Intel processors and HPE servers, "we're certainly flexible," Blom said. Both HPE and Intel boast expansive hardware portfolios, and Iceotope's liquid cooling can be mixed and matched with alternative components from those vendors. "We're happy to work with each tech provider and give them the customized solution they want," he said.

That customization is a practice with which Iceotope is familiar, thanks to its work with "the largest hyperscalers in the world who demand that it's unique to their own environment," Blom said. "The advantage of working with world-class partners like Intel and HPE is that you have a portfolio that is second to none, and you have the option to choose exactly what it is that meets the needs of your environment."

According to Blom, the three vendors' "partnership is very strong, and we're continuing [to work together] as we're looking at next generations."