Diamond-Cooled NVIDIA GPU Servers Delivered for AI
Akash Systems announced the delivery of the world's first NVIDIA GPU servers featuring its Akash Diamond Cooling® technology to NxtGen AI. The company claims the new cooling solution is additive to existing air and liquid methods and can increase GPU compute performance by approximately 15% in high ambient temperature environments by preventing thermal throttling.
- Synthetic diamond is the most thermally conductive material known, transferring heat about five times more effectively than copper, which is a common material for heat sinks in electronics. This property allows it to dissipate heat from high-power processors more efficiently without being electrically conductive. - In a demonstration on an NVIDIA RTX 4070 GPU, Akash Systems' technology reduced the chip's hot spot temperature from 72.6 °C to 62.3 °C, which the company claims can lead to a 200–400% increase in compute capacity. Other claims suggest the cooling can enable up to 25% overclocking capabilities. - The technology involves growing a thin layer of synthetic diamond directly onto semiconductor wafers, a process known as GaN-on-diamond, which addresses heat issues that account for more than 50% of all electronic failures. - Thermal throttling is a primary performance bottleneck for AI workloads; GPUs are designed to automatically slow down when temperatures exceed 90-95°C to prevent hardware damage, which can limit the speed of long-running training jobs. - Akash Systems was co-founded in 2016 by Felix Ejeckam and Ty Mitchell and has raised over $84 million in funding. - The recipient, NxtGen AI Pvt Ltd, is a Bangalore-based company incorporated in September 2022. The deal to deploy the diamond-cooled servers across its data centers in India is valued at $27 million. - In addition to private funding, Akash Systems was approved for up to $68 million in U.S. federal funding under the CHIPS and Science Act to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing and innovation.
