Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the data center, creating opportunities to help manage the flow of power and cooling in the data center, and Flex has become a full-stack provider of power, cooling, and IT infrastructure. I didn’t realize that Flex had such a broad range of products and services, everything from on-board power regulators, and critical power products such as power pods, cooling distribution units and high-density rack-level solutions. It is now launching liquid cooling-ready servers with direct-to-chip cooling technology, in racks that are compliant with Open Compute Project (OCP) specifications. Guessing that many of you also may not be aware of Flex, I did some digging and came away with some share-worthy factoids.
Let’s take a look.
Who is Flex?
Flex started as a contract board manufacturer called Flextronics in 1969 as a family-owned business. It changed its name to “Flex” in 2015 to better reflect the company’s transition from a PC board manufacturer to a comprehensive IT solution provider. It now has about 172,000 employees and generates a little over $26B in revenue.
What did Flex announce at OCP?
For starters, Flex announced a partnership with JetCool to deliver high-density compute for hyperscalers and enterprises. The co-designed racks leverage JetCool’s microconvective liquid cooling approach that uses precision jets to cool processor hotspots. This approach is designed to address data centers’ growing requirement to dissipate the heat generated by the AI accelerators that made Nvidia a 3 trillion dollar company.
Flex is partnering with JetCool, the manufacturer of the Smartplate cooling technology. JETCOOL
SmartPlate, which uses JetCool’s targeted microconvective liquid cooling technology, epitomizes breakthroughs in single-phase, direct-to-chip liquid cooling, enabling higher cooling efficiencies and sustainability compared to other liquid cooling methods. TheJetCool design can cool over 1,500 watts TDP and boasts a threefold reduction in thermal resistance when compared to industry-leading microchannel cold plate.
Flex also announced reference platforms in an OCP ORv3-compatible rack with single-phase liquid cooling, and enabled for two-phase liquid cooling. The design is customizable to support 21” and 19” footprints for IT equipment. It also announced a new intermediate bus converter product designed for the demands of AI workloads. These DC/DC power converters boast a peak efficiency of over 98% while adhering to the Open Compute Project (OCP) standard OAM V2.0.
The Flex data center portfolio: power and cooling, from the grid to the chip. FLEX
“Flex delivers integrated data center IT and power infrastructure solutions that address growing power and compute demands in the AI era,” said Michael Hartung, president and chief commercial officer, Flex. “We are expanding our unique portfolio of advanced manufacturing capabilities, innovative products, and lifecycle services, enabling customers to deploy IT and power infrastructure at scale and drive AI data center expansion.”
Conclusions
The AI data center is really not your grandfather’s data center, and demands more power and cooling than ever before. While the major semiconductor companies like Nvidia are getting a lot of attention, they need help in areas where companies like Flex has deep expertise in physics and thermal dynamics. Flex is stepping up to work with partners and hyper-scalers to address the power, cooling, and infrastructure needs to enable the AI revolution.