Cool chips for powerful computers

From cloud computing to machine learning: we constantly require more powerful chips that produce highly concentrated heat. Extracting this heat is rapidly becoming a bottleneck for the next generations of computing whilst representing 30% of electricity consumption in data centers. 2024 TOP 100 runner-up Corintis is a provider of silicon-based microfluidic cooling solutions to enable 10x higher heat extraction from silicon chips versus conventional methods, with a 50-times higher energy efficiency.

High-performance chips have had to deliver ever greater computing power over recent years, not only since the increasing use of artificial intelligence. Semiconductors are becoming ever smaller with each new generation, which concentrates the high heat generation in a very small area. This waste heat accumulates when used in huge data centers, whether by telecom providers, major banks or cloud operators. To prevent it from reducing performance or even causing the expensive chips to fail, data centers have to be cooled down significantly, which uses a great deal of energy.

The heat build-up, further accentuated by AI, comes at the right time for EPFL spin-off Corintis: the two-year-old engineering startup has developed a cooling system that docks directly onto the semiconductor. A silicon-based cooling liquid is directed over the surface of the chip via an attachment with a tiny channel system. This removes the heat directly at the point where it is generated. The cooling channels – similar to the network of arteries and veins in the body – are matched precisely to the respective chip structure. This system’s cooling performance is up to 10 times higher than that of conventional cooling methods.

Corintis’ planning software can be used to calculate the heat points and the appropriate cooling channels based on the layout of the chips – or directly during chip design: “By 2025, we want to offer an end-to-end solution with which chip designers, server manufacturers, and data center operators can implement chip and cooling design in parallel,” says co-founder Remco van Erp. Initial validation pilots with some of the sector’s leading companies have already begun.

Four questions for Remco van Erp

What was your last cash payment?
2 Francs for the Eurocup sweepstakes with our colleagues. I drew Spain, by the time this is published I‘ll know whether this was a good investment or not.

What was your last question to Chat GPT?
I asked Chat GPT to write a wedding speech, but it wasn‘t a great success, so I had to do it the old-school way!

What inspires you?
Learning new things: When you learn the basics of something new, you appreciate people‘s expertise and the elegance of things around us so much more.

How do you relax?
Spending time with friends.

“Our solution is up to 50 times more energy-efficient than cooling an entire data center,” explains van Erp. Several major orders in recent months, both for manufactured cooling systems and for the use of the software, have brought Corintis several million francs in cash. “This gives us enough time to find the right investors and partners for the upcoming scaling-up phase,” says microfluidics expert van Erp. The Lausanne-based startup wants to raise about CHF 24 million. Interested investors have already come forward.

The team is also growing: Corintis is bringing the necessary expertise for industrialization in-house through the addition of Pablo Murciego. He previously held various management roles at the technology group HP and has a wealth of expertise in the field of additive manufacturing.

“We are also moving into a bigger office space here in EPFL’s Innovation Park,” says van Erp. This not only creates space for the growing team, but also for the internal laboratory. This may reduce the current risk of tripping in the cramped rooms and on the many cables that supply power to the processors stacked on shelves. The semiconductors, worth up to CHF 100,000 each, are not only sensitive to heat but also to accidental damage.

They cool chips fifty times more efficiently than their competitors: Corintis founders Sam Harrison (left) and Remco van Erp

This article was first published in the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Magazine 2024.