The Exchanges

Q Ty, are you the, are you the silicon or are you the diamond here?

A Um, I'm actually a little bit of both. I'm the silicon carbide guy. Uh, my PhD was on silicon carbide. What that taught me when I went into the business world, uh, working for a company Cree and Woolspeed, is that, uh, Cree and Woolspeed developed very good silicon carbide materials level technology, and applying this technology to, uh, any sorts of, uh, systems like radar systems, or a power electronic system for EVs, or light emitting diodes, One of the things you learn is that when you have a materials level advancement, as the person who has that material level advancement, you really have to make the system to convince people that you have the solution. If you just go to someone who is making, let's say, a car, and you say, hey, I've got this great silicon carbide, uh, diode, a shocky diode, or a MOSFET, they'll say, all right, great. You know, I already using a, uh, a silicon IGBT. Um, if you meet their price, I'll put you in. And you say, look, if you, if you put my part in, I think I can increase your range, 200 miles. I can increase it 40%. They'll say, okay, yeah, sure. However, if you make the car, okay, you find a partner to get your part into the car, uh, or you make the box, you actually make the MOSFET, um, you make the module, the power module, the farther you go in the system, the better chance you have of convincing the customer that you have the solution. So …

AI assessment note: “I'm actually a little bit of both. I'm the silicon carbide guy.”

Q I'm gonna ask a silly question, but you've mentioned it several times. Um, uh, you're growing diamonds. How does that process work for the form factor that you want? Assuming, you know, the vast majority of our audience has only ever heard of the, the concept of growing diamonds in the, uh, you know, realm of like jewelry.

A It's really no different than, uh, than growing other, uh, other semiconductor, uh, materials. Uh, if you're growing silicon or, um, or silicon carbide or gallium arsenide or indium phosphide, any of these, uh, electronic substrates, uh, you start with a seed crystal and then you use a, uh, typically a, you know, some sort of process chemical vapor deposition, uh, to grow out From that crystal to grow, you know, perfect single crystal material out from that crystal. And that's the same way. Uh, that's the same way you grow diamond. Um, diamond is just carbon, right? So, uh, so you take a seed crystal of perfect carbon of diamond and, uh, and you, you, you use a plasma to, to grow the diamond in a, in a reactor. You know, it tastes, uh, very high, very high temperatures, you know, very high pressures to do this. But, uh, but it's essentially a similar process to growing, uh, to growing silicon or silicon carbide vapors.

AI assessment note: “you start with a seed crystal and then you use... chemical vapor deposition”

Q centers, right? So, you know, if you imagine These chips in servers and racks of servers and big rows of them in the data center. Like we have cooled large data centers for a long time with fans. Like how does this fit into the, I guess, alternative set of fans and liquid cooling and like how, how has, uh, um, large scale AI training changed the game at all?

A So this, uh, this technology that we have, this materials level technology using synthetic diamond, it actually fits with any other cooling technology that's, that's used today. Uh, today, uh, the cooling techniques that are used are really at the data center level, uh, where they do, uh, airflow containment and air containment, uh, you know, keeping the air from mixing. It's, uh, at the rack level where you were using, uh, liquid cooling, you know, CDUs and manifold and pumping liquids, uh, right to the devices to, to keep them cool, uh, or using fans. Uh, and you have it at the, uh, at the chip and package level where, uh, Uh, people are using techniques to, uh, either speed up the chips, right, uh, make more, uh, more transactions on the chip so that you get more efficiency, uh, transactions per watt, uh, or in packaging, uh, doing things like fan-out packaging where you're spreading out the heat, uh, as much as possible for any, uh, any chip or group of chips. Also things like, uh, uh, like HVM, uh, memory you can stack up right in the same package with the chip. And, uh, and give it more efficiency and essentially also more transactional robots. So these are all techniques that are being used today. And the beauty of our approach is that it works with all of these. Uh, you can, you can use, uh, diamond cooling by itself, or you can match it with anything else that you're d…

AI assessment note: “this materials level technology using synthetic diamond, it actually fits with any other cooling technology”

Q Yeah, what do you think is the importance of American manufacturing of, uh, of AI chips and data center capacity? This is especially relevant given you're one of the only small companies that is a CHIPS Act recipient and, you know, Gelsinger just stepped down. What is your current view of, uh, of American capacity and your outlook for it?

A My view is that the US is not doing enough and, uh, needs to do a lot more. This is a technology that, uh, that the US needs to be the leader in, um, and it needs to lead all the way up and down the value chain. Uh, we can't just rely on what NVIDIA or AMD has done to date. Uh, we have to continue, uh, to invest, uh, in not only the larger companies, but also the smaller companies like us, uh, like others. Who are working on some of the very critical problems, because as you know, AI is, is not only a critical technology, uh, for, for, for, for business, it's also a critical technology for national security. And, uh, these are things that, that, that the US cannot rely, uh, on other countries to develop for it. And, uh, so we have to really drive technology development. We have to drive manufacturing. Um, all the way up and down the supply chain and, uh, and, and put a lot of investment into this technology. It's going to be very important for the future of this country. And, um, you know, we're there to support that. And, uh, that that's what we're focused on.

AI assessment note: “My view is that the US is not doing enough and, uh, needs to do”