ELPA Analysis
While GPU availability has stabilized, data center operators face a new physical bottleneck: cooling. High-power chips produce immense heat, and traditional air cooling is no longer sufficient to keep them running safely.
Liquid cooling—specifically direct-to-chip water loops and immersion cooling—has become mandatory for modern clusters. However, the manufacturing capacity for liquid manifolds, pumps, and coolants is highly specialized and limited.
As a result, delivery times for cooling equipment now exceed GPU delivery times. Building an AI cluster is no longer just a silicon procurement task; it is an industrial plumbing and heat management engineering project.
