Image credit: Maxwell Labs
Hey, have you heard about this wild new way to cool down computer chips? A startup called Maxwell Labs, with help from Sandia National Laboratories, is working on using lasers to keep high-performance computers from overheating. I read about it in The Register, and it sounds super interesting!
Why We Need Better Cooling
Data centers—the places that power all our internet stuff—get really hot because of all the computers working hard. For a long time, they’ve used air to cool things down. Then big companies started trying liquid cooling, like using warm or cold water, and even dunking the tech in special liquids. But lasers? That’s a new one! They could be a game-changer for cooling chips, though there’s a catch we’ll get to.
How It Works
Maxwell Labs is using a special material called gallium arsenide (or GaAs for short) to make cold plates. When they shine a laser on these plates, they actually get colder instead of hotter—crazy, right? That’s because the GaAs is super pure and lets the laser pull heat away from specific hot spots on the chip. They put these thin GaAs pieces right on the hottest parts of the processor, so the laser can zap the heat away exactly where it’s needed. It’s not meant to cool the whole system, just help out the usual cooling methods. Fun fact: back in 2012, researchers in Copenhagen used a similar trick to cool something down to -269°C!
Here’s the coolest part: this method can even turn the heat into energy! Instead of just letting the heat go to waste, it gets turned into light particles called photons, which can be changed back into electricity. That makes the whole system more energy-efficient, though we don’t know yet how well it’ll work in real life.
The Challenges
This idea is awesome, but it’s not easy to make happen. First, making super pure GaAs is tough and expensive—it needs fancy methods that use a lot of energy. A 200-mm GaAs wafer can cost around $5,000, while a similar silicon one is only $5! Plus, there can be mistakes in the material, which makes it even pricier.
Also, GaAs doesn’t mix easily with the usual silicon chips. You can combine them using special techniques like 3D stacking or wafer bonding—stuff already used for other tech—but it’s still not cheap. The good news? Those methods aren’t as pricey as the GaAs itself, so there’s hope!
Where They’re At
Right now, this is still in the testing phase. Maxwell Labs’ boss, Jacob Balma, says their computer models look promising, but they haven’t tried it all together yet—just separate pieces. They’re hoping to have a working prototype by fall 2025, which is exciting! They’ve even got some early customers lined up for their first version, called MXL-Gen1, and plan to start delivering in the next two years. If everything goes smoothly, more people might get to use it by the end of 2027.
I think this sounds like a really neat idea—using lasers to cool chips and save energy at the same time? Sign me up! What do you think?
