As teams throughout Meta data centers know very well, thermal management—a small, silent, vital enabler to network infrastructure—significantly affects network operational performance. While thermal management may not be the focal point of today’s advancements, it’s intrinsic to the future success of areas like AI, VR, and 5G. That’s because electronic components get hot—a problem exacerbated by heightened network demands for improved reliability, higher power density, and speed.
Thermal management has been limited by conventional thermal interface materials (TIMs) and traditional active-cooling methods. But impressive results can be achieved by using effective thermal management in hardware components such as circuit boards in active antenna units (AAUs) and line cards for routers and switches.