Design and Testing of Liquid Cooled Thermal Solution for High Loading Processors

摘要

Recently, the semiconductor industry has manufactured socketed processors which can be installed using specially designed retention mechanisms. From generations, the power and I/O capabilities for the processors has been increasing and therefore the number of pins on the socket is increasing. This pin number increase is translated directly to an increment on the retention load needed for reliable electrical contact and thermal interface material actuation. For recent generations, as Intel^® Xeon^® Scalable Processor Family, a retention load higher than 1000 N has been needed for the processor installation into the socket; this force is transferred from the retention mechanism to the processor through the thermal solution i.e. heat sink or cold plate. In liquid cooling applications, this high loading calls for specific requirements that needs to be satisfied as higher stiffness values on the cold plate solution for each generation, internal high pressure resistance and thermal performance. A liquid cooled thermal solution was developed and tested for the Intel^® Xeon^® Scalable Processor Family Platform and after testing results a new design is on development for future generation of liquid cooled thermal solution on socketed processors. This liquid cooled thermal solution is designed to interact with multiple design intentions; that means that is composed by a cold plate core and a modular bracket design, responsible for the load application on the thermal solution, which allows changing the material for a stronger and/or lighter one, without impacting the thermal performance of the cold plate core due to the material selection. This paper presents the design, analysis, test setup and prototype test results for mechanical and thermal performance of the designed solution for Intel^® Xeon^® Scalable Processor Family Platform and the developed design for a next and improved liquid cooled solution. This liquid cooled solution is intended to be used as reference and this paper will be helpful to guide the thermal community to design future generations of liquid cooled thermal solution for socketed processors in data center applications as well as for different electronic components.