TRUMPF has shown a laser process that forms cooling channels directly inside AI chips, aimed at the heat that collects in densely stacked processor packages and that the company calls a growing limit on chip performance. Chipmakers keep stacking more silicon into each package, and much of that heat is now trapped where conventional cooling barely reaches.
TRUMPF showed the ultrashort-pulse laser application at Semicon Taiwan in Taipei, Taiwan, where it said the tool removes silicon carbide with micrometer precision and runs at least five times faster than the etching processes chipmakers use now, while holding the surface finish and geometry the cooling structures require. TRUMPF, which is based in Ditzingen, Germany, describes the demonstration as its first showing of the method for high-volume semiconductor production.
The work is tied to advanced packaging, where chipmakers stack or tightly link silicon dies to fit more compute into a small area. Heat then builds up inside the stack, and cooling server racks or entire data centers does little to move it, TRUMPF says. Leading chipmakers have put on-package cooling for GPUs and other AI processors on their roadmaps, including microfluidic channels and heat spreaders that pull heat out where it forms, though TRUMPF did not name any of them.
Silicon carbide conducts heat well but is hard to machine, and the cooling structures are small enough that established etching struggles with them, according to TRUMPF. Cathrin Conrad, TRUMPF's business development manager for chip cooling, credits the result to a mix of high laser power, beam-shaping optics, and application experience, and says heat dissipation "will become the bottleneck for future AI processors" without new methods. The ultrashort-pulse lasers also work with diamond, another candidate material for on-chip cooling, per TRUMPF.
TRUMPF did not give a price for the laser systems, name a semiconductor customer, or say when chips built this way reach production, leaving open how fast the method moves from a Semicon Taiwan bench to a fab line. The effort places TRUMPF's laser unit next to the packaging and heat problems now central to GPU and AI-processor design, a step out from its better-known trade in sheet-metal cutting and welding.
