Intel to build $700M sustainability-focused R&D lab

Intel has announced its intention to invest $700 million in a new research and development lab focused on developing sustainable data center technologies, such as immersion cooling, water usage effectiveness, and heat recapture and reuse.

The 200,000-square-foot lab will be located at Intel’s Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro, Oregon. Construction will begin this year, with an estimated opening date of late 2023. 

In a blog post outlining the plans, Intel said the facility will qualify, test and enable Intel’s portfolio of data center products, including processors, memory technologies, FGPA chips, Xe architecture, Habana accelerators, and future products still under development.

Eventually, customers and partners will be able to visit the lab to observe and test the products in a variety of data center environments, with the aim of accelerating the adoption of these new technologies.

In addition to opening the lab, Intel has also launched an “open intellectual property immersion liquid cooling solution and reference design.”

Earlier this year, Intel entered a multi-year partnership with the Texas-based startup Green Revolution Cooling (GRC), which involves working with data center customers to develop and implement advanced immersion cooling techniques for future data centers.

Immersion cooling is the practice of reducing heat in hardware by submerging it in a liquid that is a good thermal conductor with low or no electrical conductivity.

In 2021, Microsoft promoted the benefits of two-phase immersion cooling, using immersion tanks developed and made by LiquidStack. The two companies showcased a standardized two-phase immersion liquid-cooled solution at last year’s OCP Global Summit.