Trumpf has unveiled, for the first time, an ultrashort-pulse laser application for the industrial production of integrated cooling systems in chip stacks, producing precise microstructures in silicon carbide at a processing speed at least five times faster than etching. At Semicon Taiwan, the company presented the technology, which enables chip manufacturers to flexibly integrate cooling structures into the chip stack and is suitable for materials such as silicon carbide and diamond. Cathrin Conrad, Business Development Manager at Trumpf and responsible for chip cooling, said heat dissipation will become the bottleneck for future AI processors and that without new cooling concepts the high requirements cannot be met, adding that ultrashort-pulse lasers enable cost-effective production of the required microstructures on an industrial scale. The article states that the next generation of high-performance AI chips requires new cooling solutions, and that manufacturers are increasingly turning to advanced packaging, in which chips are stacked or closely interconnected, causing heat to be generated inside the chip stack and dissipated only to a limited extent using conventional cooling methods such as cooling server racks or entire data centers. Leading semiconductor manufacturers have included innovative cooling solutions such as microfluidic cooling or heat spreaders in their development roadmaps.