xMEMS says its solid-state cooling chips for data centers and edge devices have gone into production.

xMems Labs has started mass production of its solid-state cooling chips, which it says could be deployed in data centers.

The company says the XMC-2400 and XMC-4800 chips are primarily designed for Edge AI devices, smartphones, and smart glasses, but can also provide targeted cooling in parts of the data center.

The technology, based on the company's piezoMEMS semiconductor platform, uses ultrasonic modulation to create airflow across its silicon cooling chip. The airflow draws in cool air, which passes through microchannels to chill the hardware before the waste heat is expelled.

These devices are small in size and capacity compared with main data center cooling systems. However, xMems says the XMC-4800, the more powerful of the two, could provide additional cooling to components within a data hall, such as solid-state hard drives and "other lower-power subsystems."

"Edge AI systems are creating thermal requirements that conventional cooling technologies cannot address," said Mike Housholder, vice president and general manager of the thermal management business unit at xMems Labs. "XMC-2400 and XMC-4800 provide a unique active cooling solution for these next-generation Edge AI devices. As we enter mass production, xMems is ready to support growing customer demand at scale, while our monolithic silicon architecture creates a future path toward co-packaged thermal solutions alongside increasingly powerful Edge AI processors."

A single XMC-4800 measures 9.93 x 14.35 x 1.13mm and delivers up to 48 cubic centimeters of airflow per second at up to 1,100 Pa of back pressure, while consuming approximately 240mW (milliwatts). "In real-world testing, cooling customers have achieved chip and system-level temperature reductions between 10-25°C across glasses, smartphone and SSD devices," the company claims, though it did not detail the configurations required to achieve this reduction.

The first products featuring the chips are expected to be available next year.

xMems, based in Silicon Valley, initially used its platform to make the world's first solid-state speakers, which are just 1mm thick. It is now applying the technology platform to cooling.