LG Electronics' self-developed 600-kilowatt (kW) coolant distribution unit (CDU) has earned quality certification from Nvidia. Among Korea's corporations, LG Electronics is the first to receive this certification. Based on this certification, the company will expand global supply of liquid-cooling solutions for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.
LG Electronics said on the 27th that it recently obtained final quality certification from Nvidia for its 600 kW-class CDU. A CDU sends coolant to cold plates mounted on the graphics processing unit (GPU) and central processing unit (CPU) inside servers and recovers the heat generated by the chips. It is a core facility of the "direct-to-chip (DTC)" liquid-cooling system that cools high-density server chips directly.
LG Electronics' CDU controls coolant temperature within a ±0.25 degree (℃) range. It is equipped with virtual sensors and leak detection, and it can interface with data center integrated control systems. In Nvidia's failover operation test, when an abnormality occurred in a pump or CDU group, it switched to a backup unit and verified performance to continue operation without halting cooling.
LG Electronics views this certification as a technology validation step to supply CDUs to data center operators that use Nvidia server racks. The company plans to sequentially pursue Nvidia certification for 1-megawatt (MW), 2.5 MW, and 4 MW-class CDUs.
LG Electronics will also expand its "chip to chiller" portfolio that bundles chillers that produce coolant for data centers, CDUs that distribute the coolant, and cold plates that directly absorb heat from semiconductor chips. The company is also pursuing plans to supply CDUs to major projects such as AI data centers and modular data centers that LG CNS designs, builds, and operates.
Lee Jae-sung, president and head of the ES Business Division at LG Electronics, said, "Liquid-cooling solutions are becoming more important in the AI data center market," and added, "We will expand our total solutions business for AI data centers by leveraging our in-house cooling technology and group-level infrastructure capabilities."