Walk into a typical data center and one of the first things that jumps out at you is the noise—the low, buzzing sound of thousands of fans: fans next to individual computer chips, fans on the back panels of server racks, fans on the network switches. All of those fans are pushing hot air away from the temperature-sensitive computer chips and toward air-conditioning units.
But those fans, whirr as they might, are no longer cutting it. Over the past decade, the power density of the most advanced computer…
