AI adds sparkle to synthetic diamond sector

In an age being reshaped by artificial intelligence, few figures command the spotlight like Jensen Huang, Nvidia's founder, whose speeches, trips and even the fortunes of his suppliers are closely watched by the world.

During the AI exhibition Computex 2026 held in Taipei in June, MSI — an electronics company that has worked with Nvidia for over two decades — unveiled a new thermal solution for Nvidia's next-generation consumer graphics processing units, featuring a diamond-copper composite baseplate and diamond-composite thermal pads.

At the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas at the beginning of the year, Nvidia announced that its next-gen Vera Rubin architecture GPUs will fully adopt a solution combining diamond-copper composite thermal management and 45 C direct-to-chip liquid cooling.

At almost the same time, a picture went viral on Chinese social media: Huang met with Zhu Yanhui, founder of Chaoying Diamond Technology.

Yes, a key word has surfaced: diamond. This does not mean that the industry guru known for his taste of fashion, epitomized by his love of leather jackets, is venturing into another sector. But that diamond, or more precisely, lab-grown diamond, plays a crucial role in the AI race to cool down chips.

According to Lu Pei, chief machinery industry analyst at the research institute of China Galaxy Securities, diamond is no longer an option, but a necessity for cooling in scenarios where single-chip power consumption exceeds 1,400 watts.

Nvidia's Vera Rubin AI chip is reported to consume a staggering 2,300 W — equivalent to a household induction cooker running at full power, all packed into a chip the size of a fingernail.

In that situation, the chip's core temperature hits 110 C within minutes and forces it to slow down, crippling AI training performance.

Traditional copper and aluminum heat spreaders cannot pull heat away fast enough, while liquid cooling alone is no longer sufficient.

Diamond has become the ultimate thermal solution. With the highest thermal conductivity of any naturally occurring material, the diamond's room-temperature thermal conductivity is 5.5 times that of copper and 11 times that of aluminum.

Capable of instant heat removal, it also offers excellent electrical insulation and a coefficient of thermal expansion closely matched to that of silicon wafers, which can prevent chips cracking from sudden temperature changes, said Lu.

According to Pan Helin, a member of the expert committee on information and communication economy of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, diamond-based chip thermal management is primarily suited for high-end chips, while the most critical application field for high-end chips is the AI computing power sector.