Recently the New York Times reported the following:
Why Diamonds Are a Computer Chip’s New Best Friend (2/2)
Data centers squander vast amounts of electricity, most
of it as heat. The physical properties of diamond offer a potential solution,
researchers say.
The NYT - By Amos Zeeberg
Oct. 8, 2025
(continue)
After making the diamond disks, which are four inches wide,
the company says that it uses patented techniques to smooth the diamond so flat
that there is no defect larger than one atom above or below the entire surface
of the wafer. Customers can then attach the flat diamond wafer to the bottom of
their silicon-based chips.
The diamond layers “dissipate chip hot spots entirely,” Mr. Roscheisen said. “They’re effectively gone.”
“This approach could dramatically lower thermal resistance,” said Evelyn Wang, a mechanical engineer at M.I.T., but she noted that the technology has not yet been proven commercially.
Element Six, which is owned by De Beers, the diamond company, has long manufactured diamonds for industrial use and for cooling the chips used in powerful radio-communication devices, including communication satellites. Now it is marketing its diamonds for cooling computer chips.
“The thermal demands of next-generation A.I. and high-performance computing devices are driving renewed interest in advanced cooling solutions,” said Bruce Bolliger, the head of business development.
In January, the company announced a new material, a hybrid of diamond and copper intended to channel heat better than copper alone while being cheaper than diamond. “Copper-diamond composite provides an optimal thermal management solution” for powerful new chips, Mr. Bolliger said, which could let them run faster, increase their lifetimes and decrease the cooling costs for data centers.
Srabanti Chowdhury, an electrical engineer at Stanford
University, is using diamond to explore a new, more powerful kind of computer
chip.
Historically, the main way to increase the speed of chips
was to shrink transistors and cram more of them together on a flat silicon
wafer. But chipmakers are running up against physical limits to how small they
can make transistors. Researchers have tried to solve the problem by layering
transistors on top of one another, but multiple layers produce even more heat.
Dr. Chowdhury’s group sought to siphon off heat using diamond layers made of many crystals, which are easier to manufacture than single crystals. But they faced obstacles. Usually in polycrystalline diamond layers, the crystals are oriented vertically and not so good at moving heat horizontally, which is the major requirement in chips, because chips are flat and wide.
Moreover, diamond is typically grown at temperatures over 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit, but that is far too hot for the silicon that serves as the chip’s foundation. When Dr. Chowdhury’s group tried to deposit diamond on silicon at a lower temperature, they had trouble getting the crystals to form correctly. “Every crystal that likes to grow at high temperatures, there are problems when you grow it at low temperatures,” she said.
The research is partly funded by DARPA, the research agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. “Pairing this low-temperature technology with other heat-removal approaches could unlock compute capabilities that aren’t currently feasible,” said Yogendra Joshi, a mechanical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a program manager at DARPA.
Dr. Chowdhury said that she and other researchers are trying to address a challenge that is both old and new. “The problem of heat was already there, but now that the growth really came with A.I., it’s like a hockey stick — we see this problem growing very big,” she said. “I have not seen anything that was so important so quickly.”
Translation
為什麼鑽石是電腦晶片新的寵兒(2/2)
數據中心浪費了大量電力，其中大部分轉化為熱。研究人員表示，鑽石的物理特性提供了一個潛在的解決方案。
（繼續）
該公司表示，在製造出4英寸寬的鑽石圓盤後，他們使用專利技術將鑽石打磨得非常平整，使得晶圓整個表面上下都不存在大於一個原子的缺陷。客戶隨後可以將平坦的鑽石晶圓貼附到矽基晶片的底部。
Roscheisen先生表示，鑽石層 “可以完全消散晶片熱點”; “實際上它們已經消失了。”
麻省理工學院機械工程師Evelyn Wang表示：「這種方法可以顯著降低熱阻。」但她指出，這項技術尚未經過商業驗證。
Element Six隸屬於鑽石公司De Beers，長期以來一直致力於生產用於工業用途的鑽石，以及用於冷卻包括通訊衛星在內的強大無線電通訊設備晶片的鑽石。現在，該公司正在推廣用於冷卻電腦晶片的鑽石。
業務發展主管Bruce Bolliger說:「下一代人工智能和高效能運算設備的散熱需求，正在重新激發人們對先進冷卻解決方案的興趣」。
今年1月，該公司宣布了一種新材料 - 鑽石和銅的混合物，旨在比單純使用銅更好地傳導熱量，同時價格低於鑽石。Bolliger先生表示，“銅-鑽石複合材料為強大的新型晶片提供了最佳的熱管理解決方案”，這可以提高晶片的運行速度、延長其使用壽命，並降低數據中心的冷卻成本。
史丹佛大學電氣工程師 Srabanti Chowdhury 正在利用鑽石探索一種新型、更強大的電腦晶片。
從歷史上看，提高晶片速度的主要方法是縮小電晶體尺寸，並將更多電晶體塞進平坦的矽晶片上。然而，晶片製造商正面臨可以把晶體管做得最小的物理極限。研究人員試圖透過將晶體管層疊起來來解決這個問題，但多層電晶體會產生更多熱量。
Chowdhury 博士的團隊試圖利用多晶體構成的鑽石層來抽取熱，因為這比單晶體更容易製造。但他們面臨重重障礙。通常情況下，多晶鑽石層中的晶體是垂直取向的，不太能作出橫向地散熱，而橫向散熱是晶片的主要要求，因為晶片是又平又寬。
此外，鑽石通常在超過700攝氏度（1300華氏度）的溫度下生長，但對於作為晶片基礎的矽來說，這個溫度太高了。當Chowdhury博士的團隊嘗試在較低溫度下將鑽石沉積在矽上時，他們遇到了晶體無法正確形成的問題。她說: 「所有喜歡在高溫下生長的晶體，在低溫下生長都會出現問題」。
這項研究的部分資金由美國國防部高級研究計劃局（DARPA）提供。佐治亞理工學院機械工程師、DARPA專案經理Yogendra Joshi表示：“將這項低溫技術與其他散熱方法相結合，可以釋放目前不可能的計算能力。”
Chowdhury博士表示，她和其他研究人員正在努力應對一個既古老又新穎的挑戰。她說: 「散熱問題早已存在，但現在隨著人工智能的真正發展，它就像一根曲棍球棒 - 我們看到這個問題變得越來越大」。 「我從未見過任何事物如此重要如此急速」。
So, with
tech companies racing to build more data centers to house servers that run the
latest A.I. models, the amount of electricity these facilities consume is
skyrocketing. But most of that electricity doesn’t power computing at all but
is spilling out as heat. Engineers
have been exploring how to make a thin layer of heat-dissipating diamond and
attach it to the back of the silicon wafers on which chips are built. One
selling point of this approach is that its thin diamond layers are made of
single crystals, which are better at dissipating heat than arrays of crystals
are. Apparently, if the new approach is commercially viable, it will be a
groundbreaking event.
