00:05When it comes to product design on our graphics cards, one of the most challenging and exciting areas we face
00:12is thermal design.
00:14If you were to design a GPU card without a fan, without a cooling solution directly attached to it, the
00:22GPU would settle at around 760 degrees Celsius, which is about 100 degrees hotter than the melting point of aluminum.
00:31At the core of thermal engineering is the first law of thermodynamics, and the first
00:36law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed within a closed system.
00:43In the context of the GPU, the graphics card can be considered as a closed system.
00:49So energy flows into the graphics card in the form of electrical energy.
00:53Inside the graphics processor itself, that energy is converted into heat, and that heat
00:59then flows out through the thermal solution.
01:02There are three modes of heat transfer that we use to get heat out of the GPU.
01:07There's thermal radiation, where heat is transferred from one higher temperature surface to another
01:13lower temperature surface.
01:15There's conduction, which is where heat is transported through a solid object or from
01:20one solid object to another solid object.
01:22And there's convection, where heat is transported from a solid object to a liquid or a gas.
01:30So how does energy transform into heat inside the GPU?
01:35That happens inside the transistors of the GPU, where it takes energy to make them switch
01:39on and off.
01:40That energy then is released as heat.
01:43That heat is then conducted up through the GPU and across the thermal interface material.
01:49There, it enters into the vapor chamber.
01:52When the heat enters the vapor chamber, it hits water inside, where the water evaporates,
01:57and then the air blowing across the fins removes the heat from the fins.
02:06Previous generations had a base plate that provided the mechanical structure for the PCB and for the heat sink.
02:13The problem is that this base plate was in a thermally critical area of the design.
02:18To achieve even more cooling performance, we have to move more air through the system.
02:24So to look at how to do this, we turn to computational fluid dynamics tools in order to simulate how
02:30the air flows through the system.
02:34In order to achieve this perfect airflow, we have to remove the constraints that we had before.
02:39We have to change the PCB.
02:41We have to move the fans.
02:42We need to change the software stack that's controlling the fans.
02:47As we move forward, we're taking a holistic approach because making a GPU isn't all about the thermal solution.
02:54It's about bringing all the pieces of the product together, considering thermal design, mechanical design, electrical design,
03:01with industrial design tying it all together to unleash the full potential of the GPU,
03:07with an obsessive focus on keeping the system cool and quiet.
03:14Most of the disciplines got to have lofty dreams and come up with solutions.
03:20At the center of all of those teams is our mechanical engineers.
03:25The mechanical engineer's job is to take the dreams of all of the engineers in the team
03:31and to figure out how to pull that all together, turn it into something that we could not only design,
03:37but we could manufacture in high volume.
03:42The cooling solution is held to the PCB by springs.
03:46These springs historically are very tall, so we challenged our mechanical engineers to come up with a leaf spring design
03:54to keep the springs that hold the thermal solution to the GPU low profile enough that we could fit a
04:01back cover over them.
04:02Our mechanical engineers explore every possible way to attach the GPU cooling solution to the graphics card while not cracking
04:13the die.
04:15Every product we build is vigorously tested to high quality standards.
04:19So our mechanical engineers are constantly being challenged by our entire company to develop things that have never been developed
04:27before.
04:31When we come up with a new architecture, we have lofty dreams for performance.
04:36But one of the things we'd also like to do is be able to generate more performance by getting more
04:43power into the GPU.
04:48Whenever we talk about GPU performance, it all comes from the more power you give and you can dissipate the
04:56more performance you get.
04:58The biggest challenge whenever you do a very high-end board and try to squeeze it in six to seven
05:06inches is the power density becomes really, really, really high.
05:12Whenever we talk about signal integrity, the first thing that comes to mind is cross-talk.
05:20Cross-talk is the phenomenon where you have two wires that whenever they're very close to each other, they start
05:27affecting each other.
05:28So you can see part of the signal that is on one show up on the wire next to it.
05:34This, of course, is bad because the information on one is seen on the wire next to it and that
05:41could corrupt the information sent on the other side.
05:45The challenge in our designs is because they're so compact, it's very, very difficult to give space between adjacent signals.
05:55The way to mitigate it is, of course, using more layers on the PCB and have awesome layout engineers.
06:05One of the components that we reduced the size significantly was the power connector and we designed a new connector,
06:15which is smaller than the PCI Express connector, but actually end up carrying more power.
06:25Not too long ago, graphics cards were just a collection of FR4, a bunch of silicon and a bunch of
06:32labels stuck on there to track the board or show its compliance.
06:37One of the things our industrial designers wanted to do was to, of course, allow the thermal architecture we came
06:45up with to be realized,
06:47but they also wanted to find a way to get the design out of the way.
06:54I think it's very common to see where functional and mechanical aspect of the design being sacrificed or compromised in
07:03the name of aesthetic.
07:05This is kind of like a new for new sake approach, which I think it lacks the real purpose of
07:13the design.
07:15Designing a GPU that satisfies both mechanical and thermal world in a perfect harmony is not an easy thing to
07:23do.
07:23As a design team, we try to create products where experience, function, and form go hand in hand.
07:32I think one of the hardest challenges for industrial designers is that you should try not to look at what's
07:39been done before.
07:40As soon as you start looking at what's been done before, you just naturally become stuck with it.
07:46As a design team, before we started diving into conceptualization phase, we naturally gravitated towards this idea where really the
07:58thermal aspect of design is fully embraced.
08:03From that foundation, we were able to achieve this breakthrough thermal technology.
08:08Thank you for listeningio.
08:10Bye.
08:11Bye.
08:16Bye.
08:18Bye.
08:18Bye.
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