ChipAdd’s on-chip cooling platform integrates additively manufactured wick and manifold systems to reduce data center cooling energy and maximize high-power chip performance.
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Scott Schiffres
Scott Schiffres is the founder of ChipAdd, a company lowering AI data center energy use through additively manufactured on-chip cooling technologies. He received his BSE from Princeton University and MEng from Cornell University, then worked two years at Boeing’s Satellite Development Group. He earned a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and completed a postdoc at MIT. Schiffres is currently on leave from his role as associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering at Binghamton University (SUNY).
TECHNOLOGY
Critical Need
Data centers expend about 30–40 percent of their power use for cooling—a challenge that intensifies as chip power densities rise. Conventional cooling solutions introduce too much thermal resistance to effectively manage next-generation chips. ChipAdd eliminates this bottleneck with a chip-integrated cooling technology that significantly reduces temperature rise and energy use.
Technology Vision
ChipAdd fabricates cooling features directly onto chips using proprietary manufacturing methods. This enables high-performance, two-phase, near-junction cooling—sufficient to handle the heat flux of future AI chips without the need for refrigeration or performance throttling.
Potential for Impact
Deployed at scale, ChipAdd’s technology could reduce the cooling energy needs of AI data centers by 30 percent by enabling higher coolant temperatures. The higher coolant temperature drives heat rejection to the environment without the need for refrigeration. As AI data centers are projected to consume eight percent of U.S. electricity by 2030, ChipAdd’s approach offers a path to substantial global energy savings.
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