April 10, 2025,If there's one technology on GTC that impresses me the most, it's thermal management. Liquid-cooled units can be seen almost everywhere and they all look exactly the same on the show floor. When I was in front of a booth of an American company that specializes in liquid cooling solutions, and I suddenly realized that the application of AI may be on the way, and the AI chip is behind, but the thermal management is in front of me.
Liquid cooling occupies such an important position in GTC because energy consumption management is now the top priority of the entire AI system, whether it is 3nm semiconductor process, copper cable, or CPO, one aspect is to looking afrer low power consumption. Coincidentally, the first interview the editor received at OFC was also from Phononic, a high-performance solid-state cooling and thermal management solutions company, from Durham, North Carolina, USA.
Because Photonteck is their agent in China, CFOL has also interviewed Phonic once or twice before, this time,the editor tried to find what sets them apart.
With Larry in front of their world's first TEC grocery freezer
At Phononic's booth, Chief Product Officer Larry Yang told the editor that Phononic's TEC products offer higher performance in a smaller footprint, providing customers with an optimized active cooling solution that is more precise and smarter. And what supports their claim is their numerous patents on TEC technology, as well as their ability to go from chip to package, from design to manufacturing the entire system ability.
Larry used some data on their product to deepen the editor's impression. Why is it more performant? Because Phononic's TEC heat pump can save up to 30% of power consumption compared to competing solutions; Solid-state device-based technology can have better long-term reliability, helping customers reduce long-term costs by more than 30%; Smaller size, heat pumps can increase the density by up to 60%, and in some specific applications, such as fresh food, medical product storage, etc., solid-state cooling products provide 40% more storage capacity.
Due to the importance of TEC products, customers are also very careful in choosing TEC product suppliers. At the Phononic booth, you can see the obvious figure of 30 million, showing that their TEC chip sales have exceeded 30 million. Larry told the editor that TEC is already an indispensable device for high-speed optical transceivers. Look at the sales volume of 800G modules, you know how many TECs are in use. And not only in high-speed optical transceivers, but also in LiDars, TEC is indispensable. Since I am interested in whether some of the liquid cooling solutions on AI server motherboards will move to solid-state cooling solutions, Larry said that they do work with customers in the fields of AI HBM, GPU, etc., and they will provide different cooling solutions to customers.
How does Phononic achieve sales of 30 million TEC chips? Founded around 2009, Phononic is a rising star in the TEC field, but they focused on the optical communication market early on, and quickly opened up the market through an aggressive market strategy. In the field of optical transceivers, Larry says one of their important strengths is that they can provide customers with comprehensive thermal management design consulting. Phononic's engineers don't ask customers what kind of TEC they want, they ask what kind of thermal management they need to achieve, and then they provide customized solutions based on their engineering and design experience. In addition, since 2020, through the binding cooperation with Fabrinet, a major optical component OEM partner, Phononic has provided optical transceiver customers with comprehensive service capabilities from design to manufacturing.
Why does Phononic have such a name? Larry told the editor that it was their founder's idea. If electrons carry an electric charge and photons transmit light, then behind the heat is the phonon.They are committed to becoming a one-of-a-kind leading company in the field of thermal management.
