Alloy Enterprises, a developer of thermal management solutions, has introduced advanced cooling plates utilizing a novel manufacturing process it terms stack forging. This development addresses the escalating thermal demands within data centers, particularly as next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators, such as Nvidia's forthcoming Rubin series, exhibit significantly higher power consumption. Nvidia's March announcement regarding its Rubin series of GPUs indicated that racks incorporating the Ultra version, anticipated for release in 2027, could draw up to 600 kilowatts of electricity, nearly doubling the output of current fast electric vehicle (EV) chargers. This substantial increase in power density intensifies the challenge of maintaining optimal operating temperatures for server hardware.
According to Ali Forsyth, co-founder and CEO of Alloy Enterprises, the industry faces a critical need to extend liquid cooling capabilities beyond primary GPUs to peripheral components like memory and networking chips. Forsyth noted that while these components previously constituted about 20% of a server's cooling load and were less critical when racks consumed 120 kilowatts, the shift to 480-kilowatt racks, en route to 600 kilowatts, necessitates comprehensive liquid cooling solutions for which current options are limited.
Alloy's stack forging method is an additive manufacturing technique that bonds sheets of copper using a combination of heat and pressure, resulting in a solid, seamless cold plate. This process is positioned as more costly than traditional machining but less expensive than 3D printing. Forsyth stated that the resulting copper plates achieve "raw material properties," making them as strong as machined counterparts, while avoiding the potential porosity of 3D-printed versions or the seams inherent in machined and sintered products, which could leak under high pressure.
The company reports its stack-forged cold plates offer 35% better thermal performance than competing products, capable of creating features as small as 50 microns, approximately half the width of a human hair. Alloy focuses on internal design, translating customer specifications into compatible shapes for its manufacturing process. Initially developed for an aluminum alloy, the technology was adapted to copper due to significant interest from the data center sector, citing copper's superior heat conductivity and corrosion resistance. Forsyth indicated that Alloy Enterprises is currently collaborating with "all the big names" in the data center industry, though specific partnerships remain undisclosed. The product's public announcement in June led to a surge in industry interest, according to Forsyth.
