Summary
- Equinix's EPIC environments are operating at LD5 London, PA10 Paris, and FR6 Frankfurt, alongside sites in Osaka and Sydney.
- Customers can test liquid-cooled CPU and GPU equipment, including coolant distribution, controls, leak detection, and operating procedures.
- The launch establishes working test environments, not additional full-scale data centre capacity or independently measured efficiency improvements.
Equinix has opened liquid cooling test environments inside three European data centres, allowing customers to evaluate high-density computing equipment and supporting infrastructure under operating conditions before committing to larger installations.
The new Enhanced Performance Innovation Centers, known as EPIC, are operating at LD5 in London, PA10 in Paris, and FR6 in Frankfurt. Equinix announced the programme on 21 October, alongside facilities at OS3 in Osaka and SY5 in Sydney.
Equinix has established the environments within existing International Business Exchange facilities. They provide access to liquid cooling equipment and engineering expertise for customers assessing GPU and CPU platforms intended for more demanding computing workloads.
All five locations are described as live, with further sites planned during 2027. The company cautions that equipment configurations, capabilities, and participating technology partners may differ between installations.
The initiative addresses practical difficulties that arise when businesses move from conventional air-cooled servers to equipment with substantially greater power and heat densities. More capable processors can place additional demands on cooling equipment, electrical distribution, monitoring, and maintenance procedures.
Equinix says customers can bring computing systems into the test environments, run representative AI training and inference workloads, and work alongside its engineers and technology partners to evaluate installation requirements.
The sites are intended to expose problems with the complete operating arrangement rather than assess only the performance of an individual processor or cooling component. Testing can cover the relationship between rack infrastructure, coolant distribution, electrical supply, and facility controls.
A direct liquid cooling system removes heat from computing equipment through fluid circulating through cooling components attached to processors and other high-load devices. The heated coolant passes through a distribution system and heat exchanger before energy is transferred into the building’s cooling infrastructure.
Equinix’s technical explanation describes two cooling loops. The primary loop connects the coolant distribution unit to the building’s cooling plant, while the secondary loop carries coolant between the distribution unit and the racks.
This arrangement separates equipment cooling from the facility water circuit, allowing the relevant fluid characteristics, temperature, pressure, and flow conditions to be controlled at the interface.
Within the racks, manifolds distribute coolant through flexible hoses and quick-disconnect couplings to individual servers. The configuration must accommodate equipment installation and removal while maintaining the integrity of the liquid circuit.
Sensors provide information about coolant temperature, pressure, and flow. Equinix also identifies leak detection and automatic shutoff valves among the supporting measures used within its test installations.
These systems are important because liquid cooling introduces maintenance and operational procedures different from those associated with conventional air-cooled equipment. Connections must be inspected, fluid quality managed, and isolation arrangements tested so that maintenance can take place without unnecessarily affecting adjacent systems.
Cooling distribution equipment must also be coordinated with the building’s existing thermal infrastructure. A successful installation inside one data hall does not establish that identical equipment can be deployed elsewhere without reviewing the available cooling capacity, operating temperatures, pipework, and building controls.
Electrical requirements create another constraint. Servers with higher computing density may need increased rack power provision, suitable circuit protection, and monitoring capable of identifying changes in equipment load.
Where power and cooling are expanded together, facilities must also consider the space required for distribution equipment, structural loads, access routes, fire protection, and the availability of suitable connections to existing plant.
Equinix’s programme allows customers to evaluate these arrangements before placing larger equipment orders or modifying production environments. The company expects that early validation will reduce uncertainty around hardware compatibility and operating procedures.
That expectation has not been accompanied by an independently measured programme-wide reduction in installation time, cooling electricity use, water consumption, or maintenance cost. Performance results will depend on the configurations tested and the conditions in which equipment is ultimately deployed.
Criteo is among the customers cited by Equinix in connection with a staged approach to adopting liquid cooling. The advertising technology company has described the need to evaluate how new thermal arrangements perform across a distributed computing estate before extending them to more locations.
Its experience illustrates a requirement for repeatability across multiple sites. A cooling design that performs adequately in one facility may require modifications where the available chilled water temperatures, electrical infrastructure, rack layout, or maintenance arrangements differ.
EPIC extends earlier Equinix initiatives for testing emerging infrastructure. The company introduced a Co-Innovation Facility in 2022 and developed Solution Validation Centers in 2024 to help customers evaluate technology before wider deployment.
The new programme concentrates on liquid cooling and higher-density computing in existing operational buildings. It is therefore a technical validation service rather than an announcement of five additional data centre campuses.
Neither the launch statement nor the technical description identifies new IT megawatts entering commercial operation through EPIC. The sites provide environments in which customers can test installations at a smaller scale before making further infrastructure commitments.
The initial European facilities are already available in London, Paris, and Frankfurt. Their practical contribution will depend on whether testing identifies integration problems and helps customers establish designs and maintenance procedures suitable for subsequent production deployments.
