Mystery buyer places $300 million order for diamond-cooled AMD GPUs to tackle AI data center heat

Secret Buyer Places $300M Order for AMD GPUs Cooled With Lab-Grown Diamonds

It's no secret that AI data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity, but a surprising new solution has emerged to combat the problem: Lab-grown diamonds. An undisclosed, US-based buyer -- likely a tech company or data center developer -- has placed a $300 million order for diamond-cooled AI servers, according to Akash Systems, the Peter Thiel-backed company that makes the tech. The diamonds, which are not a typical gemstone shape, will act as a "new layer in the data center cooling stack," according to a company spokesperson. "The diamond component is integrated in a server in between the GPU and the heat sink." The GPUs in this case are AMD's Instinct MI350X. The servers will be manufactured by Taiwan-based MiTAC Computing. Diamonds help prevent heat loss and cool the stack, reducing electricity waste. They have "the highest thermal conductivity of any known material, removing heat five times faster than copper, the industry standard material for heat management," Akash Systems says. When applied to AI data centers, the goal is to enable them to "run throttle-free at higher ambient temperatures" and reduce power consumption. "Together with MiTAC's global deployment capabilities, we're enabling data centers to realize impactful compute density and breakthrough energy efficiency," says Travis Karr, AMD's Corporate Vice President, Commercial and Enterprise for its AI business. Akash declined to confirm when the diamond-encrusted chips will go into service or to provide a photo of the solution. The image below shows an Akash-built diamond-cooling plate, though it is "not exactly what's being integrated with the AMD GPUs," the company says. Perhaps they will be more of a sheet or a blanket inside the chips, as IEEE Spectrum outlines in a report on the budding technology, an active area of research. One company, San Francisco-based Diamond Foundry, is working on making a thin layer of heat-dissipating diamond to attach to the back of the silicon wafers on which chips are built, The New York Times reports. The company claims to have created "a new material" as well, which it says has already been deployed in satellite radios, making them 3x smaller and consuming 60% less power. Last month, the company announced the first shipment of diamond-cooled Nvidia GPUs to NxtGen, India's largest sovereign cloud provider. "Those are being put into action," the company says. If you're wondering how a sheet of diamonds could possibly be affordable, Akash Systems claims to have a "robust supply chain for customized lab-grown diamonds" that are a "very different price point from mined diamonds." Theoretically, the energy cost savings would offset any potential additional cost.

Diamond-cooled AMD Instinct MI350X servers get major $300 million customer

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. In brief: A mystery customer has dropped $300 million on AI servers built around AMD's Instinct MI350X GPUs, but the headline is that they're cooled with lab-grown diamonds. This enterprise hardware is aimed at squeezing more performance per watt as racks get hotter and AI data centers demand more power. The buyer hasn't been named, but reports says the order came from an undisclosed US-based customer, likely a tech firm or data center operator. The hardware is being supplied by Akash Systems, a Peter Thiel-backed startup pushing what it calls Diamond Cooling: synthetic diamond material added as an extra layer in the thermal stack, intended to spread heat away from hotspots faster than conventional copper solutions, In its announcement of the world's first diamond-cooled AI servers built by MiTAC Computing, Akash claims "throttle-free" performance can deliver up to 22% higher FLOPs per watt and up to 15% throughput improvement. The company also makes some eye-catching promises, including maintaining high performance at around 120°F (48.8°C) ambient and potentially operating with up to 100% less power dedicated to cooling thanks to lower GPU temperatures. These figures should probably be taken with a grain of salt until independent testing numbers show up. The servers themselves aren't just GPUs in a box. Akash says the systems pair MI350X GPUs with dual 5th-gen AMD Epyc 9005 CPUs, AMD Pensando Pollara 400 AI NICs, and the latest ROCm stack, with MiTAC handling manufacturing and deployment. Team Red gave its blessing to the effort. Travis Karr, Corporate Vice President of AMD Commercial and Enterprise AI, said diamond cooling was a way to unlock more performance and efficiency from Instinct parts. Akash has already shipped diamond-cooled Nvidia H200 GPU servers to India's NxtGen AI, and the company has previously talked up claims like diamond removing heat 5x faster than copper while cutting hotspot temperatures - as much as around 10°C, according to some reports. The big question is whether diamond cooling ever becomes a popular option for real-world deployments. At $300 million, someone clearly thinks it's worth finding out.