Nvidia, AMD, and data centers are buying diamonds from China

https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/nvidia-amd-and-data-centers-are-buying

It's because of diamond's high heat conductivity. The AI chips run too hot for traditional copper heat sinks to keep them cool.

74 points · 13 comments · view on lemmy.world

13 Comments

BaraCoded@literature.cafe · 45 pts · 2d (3 replies)

So... there'll be diamonds to loot in the data center dungeons?

village604@adultswim.fan · 8 pts · 2d (2 replies)

Diamonds are essentially worthless unless you want to sell them for industrial purposes.

BaraCoded@literature.cafe · 7 pts · 2d (1 reply)

Yeah, you gotta craft them into gears or jewelry first. Enchant them if possible.

YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 2d

I slot them into my weapons.

someguy3@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 2d (7 replies)

Following the links around

He noted that current cooling solutions do not replace copper entirely with diamond but mainly employ a "diamond + copper" combination, where diamond is responsible for frantically absorbing heat at the most critical localized hot spots, while copper continues to shoulder the burden of the main structure and signal transmission.

GPUs will fully adopt a solution combining diamond-copper composite thermal management and 45 C direct-to-chip liquid cooling.

Diamond Cooling: synthetic diamond material added as an extra layer in the thermal stack, intended to spread heat away from hotspots faster than conventional copper solutions,

Sounds like a diamond layer between the cpu and copper heatsink?

Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 2d (2 replies)

sounds like a waste of more resources for a useless pile of garbage

antonamo@feddit.org · 1 pts · 2d (1 reply)

Maybe currently, but imagine what could arise from the foundational research here. First actual benifit of AI might be more efficient computing. Compare it to the fibre from dot com or GPS and IMU from war research.

Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 2d

[ removed ]

nullify3112@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2d

Diamond substrate when? If they could make chips out of diamond instead of silicon that would revolutionize how the heat dissipation works and how hard we can push the chips.

Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 2d

Yeah, according to this article it says they use a diamond wafer on the CPU, but there is current research into getting the diamond as close to, or even directly on the silicon.

solrize@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 2d

Sounds like a diamond layer between the cpu and copper heatsink?

Yeah I guess they use the diamond layer instead of thermal paste.

RelativeArea1@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 2d

~~diamond copper? how? diamond burns into co² at around 800-900c and copper melting point is around 1000c, is this some corpo bait speak again for investors?~~

edit : oh, they meant something like thermal paste or similar

almost1337@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 2d (1 reply)

Diamond thermal paste has been around for a long time

solrize@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 1d

Yeah I wonder if they are using thermal paste with diamond particles aka diamond bog, or have a diamond interposer, or what.