Keeping chips cool using microfluidics, to enable more powerful electronics on earth and in space
From cloud computing to machine learning: we constantly require more powerful chips that produce highly concentrated heat. The performance and efficiency of these chips is held back by the excessive heat they generate which has to travel through many layers before it is released via an unoptimized air or liquid-cooled cold plate. This is not only inefficient but also starts having an enormous environmental impact: the cooling of data centers worldwide consumes more electricity than New York and London combined.
Corintis came up with silicon-based microfluidic cooling solutions to enable 10x higher heat extraction from silicon chips versus conventional methods, with a 50-times higher energy efficiency. Their solution extracts heat by flowing liquid through thousands of microscopically small channels, up to 10 times smaller than a human hair. This approach offers major performance and efficiency benefits compared to existing chips, and is a key enabling technology for future high-performance chips.