AI cooling showcase opens with live GPU loads and hybrid liquid cooling

DDC Solutions, part of Daikin Applied, has opened a live AI Cooling Showcase inside ScaleMatrix’s operating data center in San Diego, bringing facility cooling, rack containment, and direct-to-chip liquid cooling together under active high-density GPU workloads. Cirrascale Cloud Services, an anchor tenant at the facility, is running client AI workloads on the infrastructure.

As the operator of the program, DDC Solutions is managing customer visits, architecture briefings, and a customizable training curriculum on behalf of the Daikin Applied group. The intent is to let prospective customers, partners, and existing accounts observe the cooling architecture under real load rather than a staged demonstration.

The setup combines Daikin Applied facility-level chiller infrastructure, DDC Solutions rack containment and airside thermal management, and Chilldyne direct-to-chip liquid cooling. The architecture is positioned as an end-to-end approach that spans the thermal path from the chiller plant down to the chip.

One practical point for data center engineers: even with direct-to-chip liquid cooling capturing most processor heat, residual heat from power distribution, storage, networking, and other chassis components remains airside and still has to be managed. A “hybrid” architecture that treats air and liquid as a single system is often where reliability wins or losses show up, especially when densities climb and thermal headroom disappears.

Rack, liquid, and facility layers

DDC’s S-Series rack containment unit is described as NEMA 3R-rated and “fully sealed” at the rack level. The showcase also includes integrated rack-level fire suppression and DCIM monitoring as part of the rack-level environment, alongside Chilldyne’s negative-pressure CDU design for direct-to-chip liquid cooling.

Chilldyne’s negative-pressure approach is intended to change leak behavior: the company describes it as drawing air inward on a seal failure rather than pushing coolant outward onto hardware. Daikin Applied’s chiller infrastructure provides the facility cooling capacity and stability needed for the rack-level systems to operate within their designed parameters.

“The combination of Daikin Applied’s facility-level chiller infrastructure, DDC’s rack containment and Chilldyne’s negative-pressure CDU is the most complete asset protection and cooling architecture available for high-density AI deployments,” said Keith Markley, CEO of DDC Solutions.

Visits to the AI Cooling Showcase are available by scheduled request via DDC Solutions. Greg Jeffers, VP of Data Center Solutions at Daikin Applied, said the goal is for buyers to “walk in, see a real system under real load and leave with a clear answer to the question of what it takes to cool and protect a high-density AI cluster.”