Technology for cooling chips with light presented – secret and by appointment only

At the SC24 high-performance computing conference in Atlanta, Maxwell Labs, a pioneer in solid-state photonic chip cooling technologies, announced its readiness to license its unique technology to interested companies. With its help, heat from processors and graphics accelerators in the data center can be converted into light radiation, collected using photovoltaic cells, converted into electricity and used again in work.

Image source: Maxwell Labs

Only promotional slides that do not reveal the essence of the technology were made publicly available. The story about the development of MXL-Gen1 will be available by appointment to selected partners. In December 2024, Maxwell Labs promises to organize an early demonstration of a prototype of a photonic cooling system and will be ready to accept orders for system design at the request of interested companies.

The second stage of the program will begin in July 2025. Bench solutions will be created for participants in the preliminary program to test photonic cooling systems under conditions set by customers, as well as to form opinions and assessments about the revolutionary cooling system. The third stage is scheduled for January 2026, when the design of photonic cooling systems for racks and servers will begin.

In general, Maxwell Labs promises to achieve a threefold increase in performance and a tenfold increase in computing density due to more progressive and efficient cooling of the CPU and GPU. In addition, the emitted heat (light) can be used again for calculations.

The lack of any information about the MXL-Gen1 technology makes the company’s statements doubtful. At the same time, we must understand that light is also photons in the infrared range and radiation cooling technologies have been working for a long time, although not in the declared field. Making this a secret is strange, to say the least. All that remains is to wait for specifics.