Semiconductors Getting Hotter...Fever-dropping Businesses Win 'Chip War'

Semiconductors Getting Hotter...Fever-dropping Businesses Win 'Chip War'

Fever gets worse as the process becomes finer
The normal temperature is up to 85 degrees

The point is that the higher the semiconductor computational performance, the hotter it gets and hits the limit.

There are several reasons for semiconductor heat generation. The closer the transistor is to the fine process, the less distance and time the electrons travel. The computational performance increases, but the heat is relatively severe. There is also an increase in the clock speed (frequency) to increase the computational performance. As a result, the power consumption also increases proportionally. That's how much more heat is generated. Transistors process data by repeatedly "switching" on and off. This behavior itself causes energy loss and heat generation. When you design it at a higher density, interference occurs between transistors. This increases leakage current and generates more heat.

120 Households Power Consuming Servers

Nvidia connected 72 GB200 chips to maximize the computation. It is a server system called "GB200 NVL72." It is about 2 meters tall and weighs 1.5 tons. It looks just like a steel cabinet. It is worth a whopping 3 million dollars.

With high-density semiconductors in one place, one server rack consumes 120Kw of energy. This is the electricity that 120 households will use.

GPU chips can reach 30-50 degrees in idle conditions (Idle), where the computer is not doing any special work, and 60-85 degrees in load conditions when working. If heat management fails and the internal temperature exceeds 85 degrees, the semiconductor will fail.

Nvidia isn't the only one experiencing heat issues. Samsung Electronics' Exynos, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810, and Apple's M2 also experienced heat issues once in a while.

Find a technique to catch heat

In terms of semiconductor design, Samsung Electronics has developed a Gate-All-around (GAA) that reduces current leakage and increases power efficiency by controlling the current of the transistor on four sides instead of three sides.

They are also actively developing new materials. A case in point is graphene, a new single-layered material in which carbon atoms form a two-dimensional plane in the shape of a hexagonal honeycomb. It is the thinnest material ever discovered with a thickness of 0.34nm. It is attracting attention as a cooling material because of its high heat transfer speed. It is also actively introducing power-efficient gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC).

Cloud companies are studying how to cool down the data center servers themselves. One example is immersion cooling, which manages heat by immersing the server itself in a non-conductive liquid. In particular, Google is utilizing immersion cooling technology in its data centers in Finland and Singapore. Microsoft is going one step further and even developing ways to use the heat generated by immersion cooling as heating energy for nearby facilities.