Daikin Applied today introduced Reference Architecture D60-W Water-Cooled Chillers with Dry Coolers, a 60-megawatt cooling blueprint for AI factories based on the NVIDIA DSX AI Factory Platform with NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72.

A Blueprint for Rack-to-Ambient Cooling

Announced from Minneapolis, the architecture is intended to give data center developers, engineers, and operators a starting point for designing cooling from rack to ambient, connecting cooling equipment and controls into a single system.

The company framed the announcement against the growing role cooling plays as AI factories scale. Planning for cooling, Daikin Applied noted, often means coordinating rack requirements, facility equipment, heat rejection systems, and controls across multiple teams and suppliers.

D60-W brings those elements together in one design, which the company says helps customers reduce integration complexity and move more quickly into project engineering.

Two Temperature Loops and a 92 Percent Liquid Split

D60-W supports a 60 MW IT load across six deployable units. Liquid cooling handles 92 percent of the load, while air cooling covers the remaining 8 percent. The design runs two temperature loops: a high-temperature liquid loop serves the coolant distribution units, and a dedicated low-temperature loop serves the air-cooling rack containment units, an arrangement Daikin Applied says improves overall plant efficiency.

At the rack level, D60-W's racks are primarily liquid-cooled via CDUs, while the DDC Solutions S-Series rack containment units capture the remaining heat at the rack and move it directly to the low-temperature loop.

Fire suppression and water-loop protection are built into every rack, and operators can run compute in air-cooled, liquid-cooled or hybrid configurations side by side.

Oil-Free Chillers for Faster Recovery

The architecture is built around Daikin Applied's oil-free Magnitude WME magnetic bearing centrifugal chillers, with capacities up to 10 MW. In D60-W, dry coolers carry the cooling load for most of the year in suitable climates, with chillers supporting operation during the hottest days.

Daikin Applied drew a contrast with traditional large-scale chillers, which have relied on oil lubrication requiring maintenance even during extended standby operation, including oil management and periodic run cycles. Oil-free technology removes oil heaters, pumps and standard servicing requirements, reducing standby energy use and maintenance.

The company also says it eliminates oil-related startup delays when chillers return from the standby state, helping cooling recover quickly and protecting GPU availability.

"AI factories are designed to turn energy into output as efficiently as possible, and cooling infrastructure sits right at the center of that challenge," said Yu Nishiwaki, president and CEO of Daikin Applied. "D60-W draws on the full depth of Daikin Applied's portfolio, giving customers a single partner as they scale AI operations."

Karim Shalash, director of Data Center Solutions at Daikin Applied, described the interconnected nature of the design decisions involved. "An AI factory is a system of systems," he said.

"A cooling decision at the rack carries implications for water temperatures, flow requirements, plant operation and heat rejection. D60-W gives engineering teams a framework for working through those dependencies and developing a cooling architecture around the facility's operating requirements."

Redundancy and Uptime at Every Layer

Daikin Applied addressed reliability at multiple levels of the architecture. At the equipment level, the company's RideThrough and RapidRestore chiller technologies address brief power disturbances and restart after shutdown.

At the system level, redundancy across the cooling system, from the rack to the dry cooler, helps maintain uptime during equipment outages and planned maintenance.

Dry Coolers in Place of Evaporative Towers

Water and energy use are addressed through mode switching based on outdoor conditions. D60-W moves between dry cooling, hybrid cooling and full mechanical cooling. In dry cooling mode, the chiller compressors are off. In hybrid mode, waterside economizers precool the return water and the chillers handle the remaining load.

Heat rejection relies on dry coolers instead of evaporative cooling towers, which eliminates cooling-tower make-up water and supports low water usage effectiveness, or WUE.

A Supervisory Layer Coordinating the Plant

Within D60-W, Daikin Applied's iDCM supervisory layer coordinates RCUs, CDUs, chillers, and dry coolers as one plant. It manages load sharing, balances equipment operating hours and controls transitions between the three operating modes.

Built-in redundancy and integration with site management systems provide greater control resilience and centralized visibility, while energy optimization and predictive maintenance capabilities support plant efficiency and equipment reliability.

Scaling by Deployable Unit, with Product Availability in 2027

Because D60-W scales by deployable unit, project teams can add capacity as demand grows, backed by Daikin Applied commissioning, planned maintenance and 24/7 emergency response. The Daikin Applied CDU and data center dry cooler are currently under development, with availability targeted for the second half of 2027.

The full reference architecture is accessible through Daikin Applied's website, where customers can also discuss its application to specific projects. Daikin Applied, a member of Daikin Industries, which was named to the 2026 Fortune Global 500, designs and manufactures commercial and industrial HVAC systems sold through a global network of dedicated sales, service and parts offices.

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