Thermal management of devices is one of the biggest problems that both users and companies currently face. At a domestic level, the fact that a component can reach 90 degrees is something quite bad, but at a business level it is even worse. . For this reason, there are always companies that are looking for a way to prevent the components of the various types of computer systems that exist from overheating. In this case, a company called Element Six would be looking for a way to develop a compound used to refrigeration in devices high performance, such as those that use AIbased on copper and diamond.
High-performance computers increasingly make use of techniques further advanced of refrigeration To try to maintain stable temperatures, the fact that there are a series of connected components with a power a thousand times higher than what we could find in a home computer obviously implies that they also generate much greater heat. This means that AI or HPC (high-performance computers) systems often have to use more than three-quarters of what they occupy in cooling, although there are a series of developments underway that could improve the thermal management of these devices. .
A strange and extremely expensive but very effective combination
There are many materials in the world that have the necessary properties to be able to effectively transmit temperatures between a component such as a CPU/GPU and a heatsink or complete cooling system. In general, the ones that most users know are the most basic ones, thermal pads, thermal paste and even sometimes liquid metal. But it is clear that none of these use a material as expensive and difficult to find as diamond.
Although now we could see how this mineral is applied within the business field related to AI servers and supercomputers, since an American company has launched a material composed of diamond copper plated looking improve the efficiency of the refrigeration. One of the main characteristics that diamonds have is that they are electrical insulators, while they offer a higher thermal conductivity than copper, which makes them an ideal solution for transferring thermal energy in a much more efficient way.
According to Daniel Twitchen, Head of Technologies at the company Element Six (E6), thermal management continues to be a very important challenge that must advance along with improvements in terms of device power:
“Thermal management of semiconductor devices remains a major challenge as power levels increase and packaging continues to advance. Our copper diamond compound addresses these challenges by offering a scalable and affordable solution for next-generation AI and HPC devices. “This innovation allows our customers to improve performance and reliability, while reducing cooling costs.”
For other companies this project could be quite complicated, in fact there is a startup called Akash Systems that is studying the possibility of using diamond to cool GPUs, but the research project needs a budget of about 18 million dollars. In the case of Element Six this shouldn’t be too big of a problem, as it is a brand that belongs to De Beers, a company that used to have a monopoly on the world’s supply of diamonds, so it is a project that we will surely see in the future. market someday.
