The consumption of modern GPUs and CPUs has long reached the 500 W mark, albeit only for top-tier solutions. Accelerators for AI consume even more power. Intel’s new development suggests that in the near future, we might see GPUs with power consumption reaching up to 5 kW.
In February, at the ISSCC 2026 event, Intel will discuss new packaging technologies, but details are already known at this moment.
One of the topics will be the design of a GPU with a 5000 W power rating using integrated voltage regulators. For solutions like these, Intel plans to use advanced packaging technology, specifically a variant of Foveros-B. And all this is set to be ready by 2027, meaning the company believes that in one and a half to two years, market solutions with such monstrous power might appear.
According to some data, new Nvidia Vera Rubin chips may consume up to 2.3 kW, but the company itself has not yet commented on this. It’s also not very clear how to cool a chip with 5 kW consumption.
Recent advances in cooling technology, such as immersion cooling and advanced liquid coolers, are being explored to manage these extreme power levels in GPUs. Efforts are ongoing to optimize the thermal management of such high-power devices, ensuring they maintain performance without overheating.
With Intel’s anticipated announcement at ISSCC 2026, there is a keen industry focus on how these ultra-powerful GPUs will redefine computational capabilities, potentially beneficial for AI and advanced computing tasks. The discussed Foveros-B technology offers hope in packaging innovation, promising to address some of these intense thermal challenges, providing a possible roadmap to usher in a new era of high-performance computing devices.
