<story><title>How thermal management is changing in the age of the kilowatt chip</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/26/thermal_management_is_changing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vpribish</author><text>20,000 Amps has to be a mis-statement.  or there&amp;#x27;s some qualifier they are not mentioning.   it doesn&amp;#x27;t look like an industrial arc-furnace</text></item><item><author>rwmj</author><text>That video and the cooling system is insane.  Insanely cool even.  Thanks for posting.&lt;p&gt;I wonder, how do all the contacts in the 20,000A power distribution plate that is bolted on top of the wafer-scale die line up?  The engineering involved in just making that part work must be crazy.</text></item><item><author>brucethemoose2</author><text>If y&amp;#x27;all missed it, the Cerebras CS-2 teardown is amazing:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=pzyZpauU3Ig&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=pzyZpauU3Ig&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The engineering to handle that power density is insane. &lt;i&gt;Technically&lt;/i&gt; its less power per mm^2, but the chip is the size of a dinner plate.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The video was taken down, but looks like the web archive got it:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20230812020202&amp;#x2F;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=pzyZpauU3Ig&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20230812020202&amp;#x2F;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtu...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As well as Vimeo (thanks morcheeba): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vimeo.com&amp;#x2F;853557623&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vimeo.com&amp;#x2F;853557623&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Kirby64</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not. The CS-2 they claim can do 23kW peak. The voltage is very low. If 23kW and 20kA is right, it&amp;#x27;s a 1.15V core voltage, which is pretty normal these days.&lt;p&gt;For comparison, one of the workstation AMD EPYC processors uses ~400W under peak load, and would use approximately ~320A peak current. It&amp;#x27;s only ~30x more current... modern CPUs use an enormous amount of current these days.</text></comment>
<story><title>How thermal management is changing in the age of the kilowatt chip</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/26/thermal_management_is_changing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vpribish</author><text>20,000 Amps has to be a mis-statement.  or there&amp;#x27;s some qualifier they are not mentioning.   it doesn&amp;#x27;t look like an industrial arc-furnace</text></item><item><author>rwmj</author><text>That video and the cooling system is insane.  Insanely cool even.  Thanks for posting.&lt;p&gt;I wonder, how do all the contacts in the 20,000A power distribution plate that is bolted on top of the wafer-scale die line up?  The engineering involved in just making that part work must be crazy.</text></item><item><author>brucethemoose2</author><text>If y&amp;#x27;all missed it, the Cerebras CS-2 teardown is amazing:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=pzyZpauU3Ig&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=pzyZpauU3Ig&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The engineering to handle that power density is insane. &lt;i&gt;Technically&lt;/i&gt; its less power per mm^2, but the chip is the size of a dinner plate.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The video was taken down, but looks like the web archive got it:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20230812020202&amp;#x2F;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=pzyZpauU3Ig&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20230812020202&amp;#x2F;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtu...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As well as Vimeo (thanks morcheeba): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vimeo.com&amp;#x2F;853557623&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vimeo.com&amp;#x2F;853557623&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>LASR</author><text>850k cores apparently.&lt;p&gt;We have EPYC chips with ~100 cores at ~200w TDP. So each core is around 2W in the AMD chips. Core voltages are ~1v with modern CPUs. So that&amp;#x27;s 2A per core.&lt;p&gt;850k cores at 20kA is very much lower than the AMD chips. Must be massively parallel, lower-performing cores. But it&amp;#x27;s quite feasible that it needs 20kA.&lt;p&gt;The CS-2 system on their website specs out at 23kW peak. So all this lines up with each other.&lt;p&gt;As far as benchmarks and utility of such systems, I am not sure if they&amp;#x27;ve proven it out.</text></comment>