Introduction Parametric design plots are commonly used in early thermal architecture studies to understand sensitivity across the design space, often resulting in the selection of a single-point solution that achieves a key design objective. For example, the size of a passively cooled consumer electronics device may be selected such that it achieves the required thermal … [Read more...]
High-Performance Copper Tungsten Cold Plates for Direct-to-Chip Single-Phase Liquid Cooling
In April 2025, Google announced its 1 MW 42U rack [1], marking a turning point in data center thermal management where traditional air cooling can no longer support the extreme power densities of modern hardware. As chip thermal design power (TDP) continues to grow, data centers must replace air-cooled heat sinks with liquid-cooled cold plates [2]. Cold plates transfer heat … [Read more...]
Rethinking Thermal Design Priorities in Electronics Packaging
Steady state operating temperature is a critical design parameter for ensuring the reliable operation of modern electronics systems. However, in practice it is but one of many factors that impact overall system health and performance. Modern challenges, like the large transient power draw associated with artificial intelligence (AI) workloads create the potential for more … [Read more...]
Statistics Corner: A Failure to Fail
Component reliability testing can lead to an inherent disagreement in what different people hope to see from the results. Designers who want to use the components hope that no components fail during qualification testing to verify that they meet the reliability requirement. In contrast, analysts who characterize the reliability of the components need a sufficient number of … [Read more...]
Engineering Leak-Free Performance for Mission-Critical Electronics
Chips are getting hotter, and liquid cooling is moving from niche to necessary. That transition changes what “good” looks like for fluid connections. Quick disconnect couplings have long lived in industrial settings, where design tolerances, qualification habits, and manufacturing controls matched those use cases. Data center liquid cooling—along with aerospace/defense and … [Read more...]
