Seal a rigid vessel, fill it with carbon dioxide above its critical density, and put the processors inside. The heat raises the pressure; the pressure drives the circulation. No pump, no compressor, no chiller, and no network between the chips.
Founder and sole inventor. Three US provisional patent applications filed in 2026, covering the vessel, the module geometry and the interconnect.
Built the engineering model that sizes every machine in this deck. It runs in public at chipvat.com.
A message between GPUs in different servers crosses a PCIe root, a network card, a cable, a switch, another cable, another network card and another PCIe root. Then a chiller plant pulls the heat out, and all of it needs a hall.
The vessel is rigid and sealed, so the CO₂ can't expand. Filled at 800 kg/m³, above its critical density, every degree adds about 4.9 bar, with no pump doing the work. CO₂'s critical point, 30.98 °C and 73.8 bar, sits between room and chip temperature.
CoolProp, Span–Wagner equation of state for CO₂ at 800 kg/m³.
Model at 1000 mm: bulk fluid 26 °C · die 48 °C · coolant supply 37 °C · 7.8 m² of coil contact.
Twelve faces touch twelve neighbours, the most any equal body can touch in three dimensions. Identical modules stack with no gaps.
Every facet lies parallel to a module face, so modules seat only at particular sizes.
The facets carry the wiring, so no signal crosses a network hop to reach another module.
Beside the shell: a 1.75 m person and a 32-inch doorway (0.81 m clear), facing you. Mass is shell + CO₂ + modules; stand, supplies and plumbing add more.
The charge sets the pressure; the rating only sets how far it may climb before the vessel is at its limit. Every step up thickens the wall, and the wall is most of the weight.
Wall per ASME VIII-1 membrane formula, Cu-Cr-Zr C18150 at 120 MPa allowable. Minutes assume no heat leaves at all; module heat capacity 700 J/kg·K is assumed.
| Inner bore | 670 mm | 1000 mm | 1170 mm | 1500 mm |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compute | ||||
| Modules (CPU / storage) | 23 (3 / 3) | 101 (8 / 8) | 179 (15 / 15) | 420 (34 / 34) |
| Memory | 7.7 TB | 33.9 TB | 60.1 TB | 141 TB |
| Compute heat · wall draw | 21.9 · 24.6 kW | 96.4 · 108 kW | 171 · 191 kW | 386 · 449 kW |
| Charge | ||||
| CO₂ at 800 kg/m³ · gas if released | 109 kg · 59 m³ | 345 kg · 188 m³ | 540 kg · 294 m³ | 1,107 kg · 602 m³ |
| Stored energy, lower bound (TNT) | 1.1 kg | 3.6 kg | 5.6 kg | 11.4 kg |
| Shell wall · outside diameter | ||||
| 250 bar | 35.6 · 741 mm | 53.2 · 1,106 mm | 62.2 · 1,294 mm | 79.8 · 1,660 mm |
| 500 bar | 72.8 · 816 mm | 108.7 · 1,217 mm | 127.2 · 1,424 mm | 163.0 · 1,826 mm |
| 800 bar | 119.6 · 909 mm | 178.6 · 1,357 mm | 208.9 · 1,588 mm | 267.9 · 2,036 mm |
| Mass (shell + CO₂ + modules) · floor load under the shell | ||||
| 250 bar | 645 kg · 290 psf | 2,170 kg · 462 psf | 3,492 kg · 543 psf | 7,402 kg · 719 psf |
| 500 bar | 1,275 kg · 500 psf | 4,264 kg · 750 psf | 6,846 kg · 880 psf | 14,470 kg · 1,132 psf |
| 800 bar | 2,249 kg · 709 psf | 7,501 kg · 1,062 psf | 12,031 kg · 1,244 psf | 25,400 kg · 1,598 psf |
Offices are designed for 50 psf, heavy storage for 250 psf (ASCE 7 Table 4.3-1). Stored energy: isentropic expansion from 35 °C to CO₂'s triple point; expansion to open air adds more.
Office floors are designed for 50 lb per square foot. The lightest ChipVat, 670 mm at 250 bar, puts 290 psf under its shell. At 500 bar the 1500 mm machine weighs 14.5 tonnes and puts 1,132 psf on the floor.
Every size belongs on a ground-floor slab or a floor a structural engineer has checked.
Ratings: ASCE 7 Table 4.3-1. Bearing is concentrated through the stand's feet, so the under-shell figure is the one to design against.
139 bar is about 137 times atmospheric pressure. With coolant lost and compute at full power, a 1000 mm machine reaches its rating in:
So compute power is cut automatically on a pressure trip well below the rating, and a certified relief valve and burst disc vent outdoors.
Estimate assumes no heat leaves at all; module heat capacity 700 J/kg·K is assumed.
CO₂ is colourless, odourless and 1.5 times heavier than air, so a leak pools at the floor. 4% is immediately dangerous to life (NIOSH); 10% causes unconsciousness within minutes. A 1000 mm machine releases 188 m³ of gas.
The charge stores at least 1.1 kg of TNT-equivalent energy in the smallest machine and 11.4 kg in the largest. A failed shell throws fragments.
Escaping CO₂ freezes into dry ice at −78.5 °C. The jet causes frostbite on contact.
NIOSH IDLH 40,000 ppm · OSHA and EPA: 10% and above, unconsciousness or death · energy and gas volume from CoolProp.
Ground-floor slab or an engineered floor. Rooms sized and ventilated for a full release. Never an office.
Fixed CO₂ detectors at floor level, alarms, and low-level extraction that starts on its own.
ASME Section VIII design and stamp, hydrostatic test, relief valve and burst disc vented outdoors, pressure trip on compute power.
Swapping a module means venting and recharging the whole machine, an estimated working day. Sites run several vessels.
The hottest of many modules is hotter than the average. Temperatures get measured on the built machine.
No second source yet for shell, liner, modules or substrate. Hermetic optics qualified in CO₂ at 139 bar is the last open unknown.
No bare-die sourcing and no flip-chip rework. Donor cards cost about $0.18 M for the 670 mm machine and $3.36 M for the 1500 mm machine.
Within 16 µm of silicon's expansion across a 77 mm face, 320 W/m·K, an electrical insulator, clear at telecom wavelengths.
UALink 200G 1.0, ratified April 2025, defines an accelerator pod with no PCIe root, NIC or network in the path.
The vessel travels without its charge and is filled with CO₂ on site, so it moves as an unpressurised part.
Separate from the machine: a sealed immersion vat engineered around a customer's own cards and power supplies.
The non-provisional claiming all three is due by 08/12/27. The model behind every figure here runs live at chipvat.com.
James Jacobs
hello@chipvat.com · (510) 328-3985 · chipvat.com