Cooling vendor Ventiva has revealed details of a new reference design for a zoned air cooling architecture, which it says can be used in AI data centers.

The system, designed for data center-scale cooling, as well as for Edge systems and end-user devices such as laptops, was showcased for the first time at the CES 2026 trade show, taking place in Las Vegas this week.

California-based Ventiva claims the new zoned cooling design enables airflow and cooling capacity to be directed precisely to the components that generate the most heat – such as CPUs, GPUs, and AI accelerators – delivering “targeted, efficient cooling where it matters most.”

The company said the design uses “ionic cooling technology” and “delivers micro-channeled airflow that efficiently directs cooling to emerging board hot spots such as memory, storage, and more.”

This apparently “frees valuable chassis space, improving rack density and system design breakthroughs, and is an augmentative cooling solution for hybrid, liquid solutions in data centers.”

The system appears to be a plasma cooling set-up, where electrostatic fields convert electrical current into airflow. Several other vendors are marketing plasma cooling solutions.

“Our zoned cooling approach to thermal management represents a meaningful step forward in system design,” said Carl Schlachte, chairman, president, and CEO of Ventiva. “By cooling only where it’s needed, designers can reclaim valuable motherboard space, simplify internal layouts, and reduce reliance on bulky mechanical components, enabling thinner, quieter devices with fewer tradeoffs while still meeting the thermal demands of AI workloads.”