AMD and Celsia Technologies announced today a strategic partnership in which Celsia may become the cooling system manufacturer for ATI's next generation video cards. For now both companies are working on a vapor chamber based cooling solution for high end graphics cards and that's all we have. The cooling module includes Celsia's patented NanoSpreader that "significantly outperforms competing heat pipe based solutions." A NanoSpreader is a patented copper encased two-phase vapor chamber into which pure water is vacuum sealed. The liquid is absorbed by a copper-mesh wick and passed as vapor through a micro-perforated copper sheet where it cools and returns as liquid to the wick. NanoSpreaders are half the weight of solid copper, and yet they perform 14% better than heat pipes.
"Working with AMD, we were able to meet all of the design criteria for a new GPU cooler. Namely, it had to be lighter, perform better and be lower cost than the current heat pipe based design," said Joe Formichelli, Celsia's CEO. "Unlike thermal modules using heat pipes, our two-phase NanoSpreader comes in direct contact with the heat source whereby removing costly, heavy base plates."
As part of AMD's technology development project, Celsia has been invited to present at the 2008 AMD Technical Forum and Exposition tomorrow in Taiwan. Additionally, a short video explaining Celsia's NanoSpreader vapor chamber technology will be shown as part of the conference's opening presentation.