Physicists at the University of Sydney have developed a world-first cryogenic cooling technology that could fundamentally change how artificial intelligence infrastructure is built and where it can be located — potentially slashing the enormous water and energy demands that define today's data centres.
Cooling Computers to Sub-Zero Extremes
Inside a University of Sydney laboratory, researchers are chilling computing hardware to temperatures colder than anything found naturally on Earth. The approach draws on principles similar to conventional refrigeration but uses specialised gases capable of reaching far lower temperatures.
Thomas Ohki from Emergence Quantum explained the technique uses "gases that allow you to go to even lower temperatures" than standard refrigerants — a critical distinction that underpins the entire concept.
The payoff, according to Emergence Quantum's David Reilly, is significant: "If you cool computers, then they run faster, significantly faster." Reilly framed the broader challenge bluntly — "The hotter artificial intelligence gets, the colder our computers may need to become."
As artificial intelligence continues to expand across industries, the computational load driving that growth has made heat management one of the central engineering problems of the era.
A Potential Answer to Data Centres' Water Problem
One of the most striking implications of the research is its potential to dramatically reduce water consumption. Conventional large-scale data centres rely on vast quantities of water to manage heat. Cryogenic cooling, Reilly said, removes that dependency: "That's important because it means that you're not having to then move that huge amount of water."
Beyond water, researchers believe the technology could also reduce overall power consumption — two factors that currently dictate where data centres can realistically be built.
Opening Up Regional and Renewable Options
If the technology scales beyond the laboratory, it could reshape Australia's data centre geography entirely. Reilly pointed to a future where cryogenics enables "large-scale data centres in regional areas, close to renewable energy, where both the cryogenics is used to store as well as extract heat from processes."
That prospect is significant for a country with abundant renewable energy resources in areas currently considered too remote for major digital infrastructure.
From the Lab to Industrial Scale
Julie Cairney from the University of Sydney highlighted the broader economic opportunity the breakthrough could represent. "By being able to diversify our economy by creating whole new industries, it can be incredibly valuable to us," she said.
The critical next step, however, is transitioning the technology from a controlled laboratory setting to the enormous scale demanded by Australia's growing data centre sector — a challenge researchers acknowledge remains ahead of them. Whether the science can make that leap will determine just how transformative this world-first cooling technology ultimately proves to be.
