Lasers are typically the go-to tech for heating things fast, precisely, and from afar. But what if we flipped the script? Under the right conditions, lasers can cool instead of heat. And now, that unusual property might be the key to solving one of the tech world’s biggest power problems: overheated data centers.
In a partnership, Sandia National Laboratories is teaming up with Minnesota-based startup Maxwell Labs to tackle the persistent heat issues in data centers by zapping microscopic hotspots on chips with precision lasers. It’s not science fiction—it’s laser-based photonic cooling, and it could change everything.
Data centers are the digital world’s workhorses, but they come with a price—a lot of energy, especially for keeping things cool. In fact, 30–40% of a data center’s energy use goes toward cooling high-performance computers. That’s a staggering number, and it’s why smarter, more efficient cooling methods are such a hot topic.
While lasers have been used to cool antimatter and assist in biological or quantum research, this application is something new. Alongside researchers at the University of New Mexico, Sandia and Maxwell Labs are venturing into uncharted territory: using photonic cold plates to cool down data chips from the inside out.
Here’s how it works: lasers tuned to specific frequencies are fired at precise points—mere hundreds of microns wide—on the surface of elements like gallium arsenide, a semiconductor material. When everything aligns just right, the laser removes heat instead of adding it. It’s not just clever—it’s potentially game-changing.
Rather than relying on conventional cold water systems that run through copper plates to carry heat away, the proposed solution uses a gallium-arsenide-based photonic cold plate. This plate is incredibly thin, less than a millimeter, and engineered to guide laser beams directly to hot spots on a chip. Think of it as targeted laser surgery for overheating processors.
This could either complement or even replace traditional cooling systems. The result? Cooler chips, less energy usage, and better performance. When chips overheat, they throttle down—slowing processes to protect themselves. With precise cooling, chips could operate at full tilt without the risk.
Maxwell Labs CEO Jacob Balma said: “The unique capability of light to target and control localized heating spatially and at optical timescales for these devices unlocks thermal design constraints that are so fundamental to chip design that it is hard to speculate what chip architects will do with it – but I trust that it will fundamentally change the types of problems we can solve with computers.”
Source: Sandia National Laboratories
