Key facts
- Technology originally developed for the International Space Station is being adapted to cool AI data centers.
- The goal is to prevent overheating and "throttling" of computer equipment, which can cause performance degradation and downtime.
- Increasing chip heat-emission issues are driving demand for advanced cooling solutions like liquid cooling and new thermal interface materials.
- Data centers' electricity consumption is a growing concern, projected to rise substantially in the coming years.
- Broadcom is collaborating with Mikros to integrate advanced thermal management into its next-generation AI accelerators.
Researchers are adapting technology originally developed for the International Space Station to address the growing challenge of heat dissipation in AI data centers. Companies like Mikros Technologies and Carbice Corporation are at the forefront of this effort, aiming to prevent the "throttling" of computer equipment caused by overheating.
Increasing chip heat-emission issues are driving demand for advanced cooling solutions, including liquid cooling and new thermal interface materials. These advancements are crucial as data centers consume a significant and growing portion of electricity, with projections indicating a substantial increase in their energy demand in the coming years. This trend is already stressing power grids.
Mikros Technologies, which previously designed cooling systems for the International Space Station, is now applying those principles to high-performance computing and AI. The company has partnered with Broadcom to integrate its thermal solutions into Broadcom's next-generation AI accelerators (XPUs). This collaboration aims to manage the extreme heat generated by these powerful chips.
Overheating in data centers can lead to "throttling," a process used to manage heat, power consumption, or traffic, which carries significant costs. Emergency thermal throttling due to servers overheating can result in substantial downtime costs. An example of such an issue occurred with an Amazon data center outage in Virginia on May 7, which impacted companies including the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.