Cooling Matters: Benchmarking Large Language Models and Vision-Language Models on Liquid-Cooled Versus Air-Cooled H100 GPU Systems

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Latif, Imran, Shafique, Muhammad Ali, Ullah, Hayat, Newkirk, Alex C., Yu, Xi, Munir, Arslan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Latif, Imran
Shafique, Muhammad Ali
Ullah, Hayat
Newkirk, Alex C.
Yu, Xi
Munir, Arslan
author_facet Latif, Imran
Shafique, Muhammad Ali
Ullah, Hayat
Newkirk, Alex C.
Yu, Xi
Munir, Arslan
contents The unprecedented growth in artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, recently dominated by large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs), has intensified power and cooling demands in data centers. This study benchmarks LLMs and VLMs on two HGX nodes, each with 8x NVIDIA H100 graphics processing units (GPUs), using liquid and air cooling. Leveraging GPU Burn, Weights and Biases, and IPMItool, we collect detailed thermal, power, and computation data. Results show that the liquid-cooled systems maintain GPU temperatures between 41-50 degrees Celsius, while the air-cooled counterparts fluctuate between 54-72 degrees Celsius under load. This thermal stability of liquid-cooled systems yields 17 percent higher performance (54 TFLOPs per GPU vs. 46 TFLOPs per GPU), improved performance per watt, reduced energy overhead, and greater system efficiency than the air-cooled counterparts. These findings underscore the energy and sustainability benefits of liquid cooling, offering a compelling path forward for hyperscale data centers s
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_16781
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cooling Matters: Benchmarking Large Language Models and Vision-Language Models on Liquid-Cooled Versus Air-Cooled H100 GPU Systems
Latif, Imran
Shafique, Muhammad Ali
Ullah, Hayat
Newkirk, Alex C.
Yu, Xi
Munir, Arslan
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
The unprecedented growth in artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, recently dominated by large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs), has intensified power and cooling demands in data centers. This study benchmarks LLMs and VLMs on two HGX nodes, each with 8x NVIDIA H100 graphics processing units (GPUs), using liquid and air cooling. Leveraging GPU Burn, Weights and Biases, and IPMItool, we collect detailed thermal, power, and computation data. Results show that the liquid-cooled systems maintain GPU temperatures between 41-50 degrees Celsius, while the air-cooled counterparts fluctuate between 54-72 degrees Celsius under load. This thermal stability of liquid-cooled systems yields 17 percent higher performance (54 TFLOPs per GPU vs. 46 TFLOPs per GPU), improved performance per watt, reduced energy overhead, and greater system efficiency than the air-cooled counterparts. These findings underscore the energy and sustainability benefits of liquid cooling, offering a compelling path forward for hyperscale data centers s
title Cooling Matters: Benchmarking Large Language Models and Vision-Language Models on Liquid-Cooled Versus Air-Cooled H100 GPU Systems
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16781