Advanced Materials

Copper has been the backbone of thermal design for decades. If you’ve ever seen a heat sink, cold plate, or serious cooling hardware, copper is usually somewhere in the system. So why is “copper vs diamond” even a conversation? Because modern AI hardware isn’t losing to average temperature. It’s losing to hotspots. This article breaks down why copper remains essential and why diamond is increasingly discussed as an upgrade specifically for hotspot-limited AI compute. The real

AI chips aren’t stalling because we can’t build powerful compute. They’re stalling for a limiting factor that has shown up across decades of innovation: heat dissipation . The AI boom is creating a modern version of an old industrial problem. Like early factories that needed better pipes, pumps, and cooling to run hotter and faster, AI infrastructure is now hitting a thermal bottleneck. Temperature is setting a ceiling on: chip performance  (how long systems can sustain peak