A Novel Outdoor Edge Server Design with Hybrid Air Cooling and Refrigeration

Edge servers are trending up to 24% of total global server deployment in 2024. Several emerging applications are required to deploy with edge servers in harsh outdoor edge environments where special system design is required to address the challenges of extended temperature, waterproof ratings of IP65 or above, corrosion resistance, lightening protection, antifreeze and so on, compared with data center server. In parallel, as more AI services extended to edge from datacenter, high TDP CPUs and GPUs deployed in data center have been relocated in footprint constraint, -40~55+℃ extended temperature edge environments which calls for advanced thermal solutions with air cooling optimal techniques, heat exchangers, and refrigeration. This paper introduces a novel outdoor Xeon Scalable Processor edge server design with hybrid cooling solution of two-layer air cooling by the inner and outer circulations mechanism, companioned with refrigeration techniques. This hybrid cooling solution optimal for energy efficiency and edge server reliability, efficiently addressed the challenges of redeployment from datacenter to extended temperature edge environments for IT devices or components whose working temperature is limited within 5~35℃ data center or 5~45℃ High Temperature Ambient (HTA) data center level. Engineering design artwork results include thermal simulation, validation test data as well as filed deployment cases are also summarized in this paper.