Xiaogang Cao, a Chinese journalist, took up ASICMiner’s invitation to tour its Hong Kong facilities, where its immersion cooling mining facility is located. Xiaogang then wrote about the experience on the Bitcointalk.org forum and included photos.
Xiaogang’s post says that the mining facility is in the middle of an industrial zone. Inside are racks not unlike what you would find in a typical data center, but here, “Each rack contains three sealed liquid glass tank[s], blades are all operating quietly in the liquid,” he writes. He said what was so strange was how quiet all the machinery is.
“If [you] turn off the air-condition,” he writes, “this place is even more quiet than a library.”
Xiaogang’s host told him that this kind of technology has long been in development. The plant itself was built in August of 2013.
Immersion cooling does essentially what it sounds like, it keeps something cool. A given electronic component is immersed in a liquid that has cooling properties sufficient to be a thousand times more effective at removing heat than just air. For intense Bitcoin mining operations, this is a huge boost because mining hardware gets hot fast.
Even better, an immersion cooling facility such as ASICMiner’s will be able to accommodate future technologies and hardware, necessary in a space where innovation is so rapid.
An ASICMiner representative told Xiaogang that the cooling technique used in their facility is one of the most advanced in the world. Still, he says only a portion of the mining facility is even operation, with many racks empty.