New Standard for AI Chip Heat Dissipation: Dongguan Nuodi's Effective Thermal Management Solution with Thermal Grease

As artificial intelligence (AI) technology undergoes exponential growth, AI chips, serving as the core computing units, are experiencing continuous leaps in performance. From processing tens of millions of data per second initially to effortlessly handling tens of billions of operations today, the geometric increase in chip computing speed has brought unprecedented heat dissipation challenges. When a chip's operating temperature exceeds the critical threshold, it not only triggers frequency reduction mechanisms that drastically decrease computing efficiency but also accelerates the aging of electronic components in the long-term high-temperature environment, and may even cause irreversible hardware damage. Therefore, establishing an efficient heat dissipation system has become a key proposition for unleashing the performance and ensuring the service life of AI chips. Among numerous heat dissipation technologies, thermal grease is gradually establishing its core position in the field of AI chip thermal management due to its excellent thermal conductivity and adaptability.

Thermal grease is essentially a paste-like material system based on organic silicone and compounded with high thermal conductivity fillers. This special formulation gives it the ability to fill micron-level gaps—the seemingly flat contact surfaces between chips and heat sinks are actually covered with micron-level grooves and pores under an electron microscope. The air remaining in these areas has a thermal conductivity of only 0.024 W/m·K, acting as an "insulator" for heat transfer. In contrast, thermal grease, with a thermal conductivity of 1.0–5.2 W/m·K, can increase the interface contact area from less than 50% to over 95%, forming a continuous heat conduction path and reducing thermal resistance by over 70%. Through this dual function of physical filling and heat conduction, it can rapidly conduct heat from the core area of the chip to the heat sink fins, thereby achieving efficient heat dissipation.

In addition to excellent thermal conductivity, thermal grease also demonstrates unique engineering adaptability. Its thixotropic properties enable it to exhibit a fluid state during application, easily penetrating into the complex curved surfaces between the chip and the heat sink, and rapidly solidifying into a stable thermal conductive layer after standing, ensuring uniform coverage even on the surfaces of high-precision irregular chips such as GPUs. This adaptive capability effectively avoids problems like air bubbles and uneven thickness that are prone to occur with traditional heat dissipation materials, ensuring the consistency and stability of heat conduction. Moreover, after decades of application accumulation in the electronics industry, thermal grease has formed a complete product matrix. From general-purpose products for consumer-grade CPU cooling to high thermal conductivity models specially designed for AI accelerator cards in data centers, the diverse products not only meet the heat dissipation needs of chips with different computing capabilities but also ensure product performance consistency through standardized production processes, significantly reducing the maintenance risks of heat dissipation systems.

Looking to the future, as AI chip manufacturing processes evolve toward 3nm and even smaller scales, the power consumption per unit area will further increase, raising the requirements for heat dissipation materials to new heights. Currently, the industry is dedicated to breaking through the thermal conductivity of thermal grease beyond 6.0 W/m·K through cutting-edge technologies such as nano-scale filler compounding and phase-change material integration, while optimizing its long-term high-temperature stability. It can be foreseen that under the collaborative innovation of materials science and AI technology, thermal grease will continue to iterate and upgrade, building a more solid thermal management defense for the performance breakthroughs of AI chips and becoming an important behind-the-scenes driving force for the development of the artificial intelligence industry.