IT Equipment in Immersion Cooling: Design and Validation Guidelines

Author: Presenter unnamed; OCP ITE (IT Equipment) Committee; presented at OCP Future Technologies Symposium Collection: 2024 OCP Global Summit - Cooling Environments & Immersion

Summary

This presentation announces and scopes the major refresh of the OCP ITE (IT Equipment) Design Guidelines for Immersion Cooling, originally published in December 2020. The updated guidelines are being authored by a new workgroup forming at the time of this session. The motivation for the refresh is that the 2020 document is four years old, the community has grown substantially, immersion adoption has widened, and silicon power levels have increased dramatically (1,000W per socket common today, 1,500W+ coming soon), requiring guidance that the original document did not anticipate.

The scope of the new guidelines covers: IT equipment form factors (19-inch rackmount, OCP ORv3, immersion-native, and immersion-conversion designs); all immersion environment types (natural convection, direct convection, forced/targeted convection, two-phase); testing methodologies for thermal performance, signal integrity, and regulatory compliance; connectivity requirements for networking and power cables in immersion; and service/support guidelines for equipment removal, cleaning, and lifecycle management. The guidelines explicitly exclude material compatibility, fluid specifications, and cleaning guidelines since these are covered by other OCP workstreams.

A central concern is interoperability and standardization: customers deploying immersion tanks want to mix servers from multiple OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and ODMs (Original Design Manufacturers) across multiple generations within the same tank, requiring form factor, flow rate, and fluid compatibility standards that currently do not exist. Regulatory compliance — specifically UL (Underwriters Laboratories) and NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) certification for immersion-deployed equipment — is identified as broadly ignored in the industry but critically important for enterprise and hyperscale adoption.