Electronics don’t play nicely with most liquids, which is why liquid cooling in the datacenter is often considered a little dangerous. Microsoft, however, has found a way to dispel such worries with a scheme that sees liquids flow across the surface of chips.

As explained in a Tuesday post, the technique is called “Microfluidics” and sees “Tiny channels … etched directly on the back of the silicon chip, creating grooves that allow cooling liquid to flow directly onto the chip and more efficiently remove heat.”

Microsoft says each groove is “similar in size to human hair”, and that it placed them after analysis – helped by AI, because 2025 – to determine which parts of a chip need cooling. The result is a matrix of grooves that the software giant says “resembles the veins in a leaf or a butterfly wing – nature has proven adept at finding the most efficient routes to distribute what’s needed.”

The software giant says the channels that carry the liquid coolant “are deep enough to circulate adequate cooling liquid without clogging while not being so deep as to weaken the silicon such that it risks breaking.”

Here’s a look at a chip that uses microfluidics.

Channels on a chip that funnel coolant using microfluidics. Photo by Dan DeLong for Microsoft. – Click to enlarge

The post says Microsoft staged “lab-scale tests” in which it found microfluidics “performed up to three times better than cold plates at removing heat, depending on workloads and configurations involved” and “reduced the maximum temperature rise of the silicon inside a GPU by 65 percent.” It is unclear what the latter metric means.

Microsoft didn’t offer any details about the liquid coolants used so we don’t know if they’re practical or safe to use in datacenters other than Microsoft’s hyperscale facilities. The company did allow that its microfluidics rig needs a leak-proof package.

The software giant’s post posits microfluidics could one day see 3D chip designs in which liquids flow through large semiconductors and imagines the tech could one day deliver denser and more efficient datacenters.

But the post is also a blue-sky affair devoid of commitments to implement microfluidics, leaving conventional methods like cold plates and immersion in dielectric liquids the safest liquid cooling options. ®