Schneider Electric partners with NVIDIA to design advanced datacenter cooling systems optimized for dense AI GPU deployments.

French electrical equipment maker Schneider Electric is working with Nvidia to develop designs for data center cooling systems for new artificial intelligence data centers. These designs will be deployed in data centers using Nvidia's flagship server, which contains 72 of its most powerful AI chips and is set to roll out early next year. No financial terms of the agreement were disclosed.

The servers utilizing these chips will consume up to 132 kilowatts of power per server rack, with the most powerful versions requiring liquid cooling to operate. Nvidia's decision to transition most of its chip lineup to liquid cooling has prompted a surge in data center construction and reconfiguration efforts to accommodate the new technology.

According to Aparna Prabhakar, senior vice president of the secure power division at Schneider, the company collaborated with Nvidia to design a range of cooling system options that can be scaled up or down depending on how many Nvidia servers are being installed and their power consumption levels. The cooling plans will be sold to cloud computing firms and data center customers. "It is heavy lifting on both sides," Prabhakar said of the engineering effort, noting that "We take care of everything which is outside of the servers, and Nvidia is working on what's inside the server."

Schneider Electric, which replaced its CEO last month, has been expanding its artificial intelligence data center business. In 2023, the company signed a deal with Compass Datacenters to supply $3 billion of electrical equipment over five years, underscoring its commitment to this rapidly growing market segment.