Modine, the owner of the Airedale chiller business, has diversified into immersion cooling, with the purchase of the assets of TMGcore, a startup offering single-phase and two-phase immersion cooling for high-density computing.
TMGcore launched Otto, a two-phase immersion cooling system that uses robotic arms to handle maintenance tasks, around 2020. This was followed by ComputeCore, a single-phase immersion cooling tank, with a capacity of 48 rack units (48U), which can contain 200kW of computing power, in a space of 26 sq ft (2.4 sqm).
Modine has bought TMGcore's intellectual property and other assets, saying the investment will "cement the company's position as a complete cooling solutions provider" as data center densities increase. Modine has not bought the TMGcore legal entity,
Neil Brinker, president and CEO of Modine said: "This investment strengthens Modine's position in the rapidly growing data center market, providing our customers with advanced solutions to support high-density, accelerated computing applications, such as generative artificial intelligence, 5G, and machine learning."
Modine quotes market research which predicts liquid cooling for data centers will reach a $7.8 billion market by 2028.
Submerging servers in non-conductive fluid removes heat more efficiently, allowing greater compute densities, with less energy needed for cooling.
Alongside its ComputeCore and Otto, TMGcore has an Edge module designed to operate as a standalone liquid-cooled resource. It has also offered CryptoCore, a single-phase immersion tank for cryptocurrency miners.
Eric McGinnis, president of Modine Climate Solutions, said the investment would allow the company to "cover air, liquid, and hybrid systems."
Liquid cooling systems have been seen as a niche technology for crypto mining and high-performance computing, but it has long been predicted that higher densities will eventually force it into general-purpose data centers. The rise of AI systems is now seen as a catalyst for change.
Power and cooling giant Vertiv recently bought liquid cooling specialist CoolTera, and also announced that Intel's Gaudi3 AI processors would be equipped with two-phase cooling from Vertiv.
