Why do electronics get hot?

GPU Overheating

Electronic devices become hot when running because of the movement of electrons within the materials they are made of, such as metals and semiconductors. This results in collisions with ions and the release of energy as heat. As the device is powered on, electrons are driven to move by the electromotive force (EMF, or voltage) provided by the battery, facilitating the transfer of information between components and producing images and sounds.

During this movement, electrons inevitably collide with the ions that make up the material. These collisions cause the electrons to release energy gained from the electric field to the ions, making them vibrate more vigorously, thus increasing the temperature of the material. Try clapping your hands together…the collisions between your hands makes them get hot!

This phenomenon is closely related to the electrical resistance of materials, as more collisions result in higher resistivity. If there were a material in which electrons could move freely without colliding with ions, there would be no heating issue. Such materials, called superconductors, exist, but their superconducting properties currently only manifest at very low temperatures.

Artificial Intelligence turns the heat up for electronics in data centers

Data centers worldwide are adapting to support the increasing demand driven by the AI boom, necessitating an assessment of their current infrastructure's capacity to handle power-intensive equipment. The NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPU, a key component in this infrastructure, boasts a maximum Thermal Design Power (TDP) of 700W, indicating its peak power consumption and heat generation during normal operation. When integrated into the NVIDIA HGX H200 system, which combines the H200 GPUs with high-speed interconnects, the resulting servers become exceptionally powerful and thus exceptionally powerful at generating waste heat. For instance, a configuration with four H200 GPUs requires 2.8kW, while one with eight GPUs demands 5.6kW. As a comparison, a typical household microwave oven rated at 1kW will consume 0.17kW when operated for 10 minutes. Therefore, one NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPU has the power equivalence of a 1kW microwave oven cooking on full power for 42 minutes – that’s a LOT of heat!