Sandia Partners with Maxwell Labs to Develop Method to Cool Computer Chips Using Lasers

Photo credit: Craig Fritz
Sandia National Laboratories teamed up with Maxwell Labs, a startup from Minnesota, and the University of New Mexico to try a new way to keep computer chips cool using lasers. This method, called photonic cooling, wants to make cooling systems for computers—like those in big data centers—work better, using less power and water than old technologies relying on fans or water coolers.

Traditional cooling (fans, air conditioners, or water pipes) is bulky, energy-hungry, and sometimes wasteful. Instead of using air or water, the team is testing a photonic cold plate made of a material called gallium arsenide, a semiconductor similar to silicon.

Basically, when a laser beams onto ultra-pure gallium arsenide, it interacts with the material’s atoms to pull heat away instead of adding it. This happens because the laser’s light bits, called photons, spark a cooling effect deep inside. The laser targets tiny “hot spots” on the chip (about the size of a speck of dust, or hundreds of microns).

The cold plate soaks up the heat, and the laser turns that heat into light, which can potentially be reused to make electricity, making the whole thing super efficient. It sounds like something from the future, but it’s based on how light works with certain materials. If it pans out, it could be a big deal for data centers, but it’s still a couple of years away from being a sure bet.

About 30 to 40 percent of the energy data centers use is spent on cooling. We really only have to cool down spots that are on the order of hundreds of microns,” said Raktim Sarma, the lead Sandia physicist on the project.

[Source]