A new liquid cooling technology for servers is getting attention through a test deployment at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).

According to the manufacturer, Flometrics, the "Cool-Flo" system relies on an outdoor cooling tower and indoor pump and can be deployed at rack level and direct-to-the-chip. Flometrics claims that the system is so efficient that it can allow data centers to achieve "practically unlimited density", lower CPU temperatures by up to 30 degrees Celsius and reduce overall power consumption by 25 to 30 percent.

Few technical details about the cooling system were provided, but it uses a negative pressure pump that eliminates leaks, a pistonless pump system that primes immediately and lasts for more than five years. The system also allows data center engineers to remove individual servers from a system without encountering liquid drips.

According to Calit2, Cool-Flo "is based on rocket-cooling technology and utilizes a pump developed with a grant from NASA's Small Business Innovation Research program."

Its inventor, Flometrics CEO Steve Harrington, is a part-time instructor in UCSD's Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department. There was no information when the technology could be commercially available.