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July 2026
Managing Thermal and Electrical Demands in 1kW+ AI Processor Burn-In By John Pioroda, Director of Product Marketing, Aehr Test Systems
performance, they are also reshaping the thermal and electrical demands placed on production test. Next-generation AI accelera- tors, including CPUs, GPUs, TPUs, and ASICs, increasingly rely on advanced multi-die packaging such as Chip-on- Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS). As these architectures scale, device pow- er consumption has moved well be- yond historic levels of less than 200W into ranges of 400W to 2,000W and higher. For reliability qualification and
A
production screening, that shift has made burn-in more complex. Multi-die processors must be subjected to simul- taneous voltage and thermal stress to identify infant mortality failures be- fore devices reach the field. Conventional air-cooled burn-in
systems, however, are not designed to support these power levels without the risk of localized thermal runaway, volt- age droop, or inconsistent test results. Testing these devices requires a paral- lel burn-in architecture built around high thermal dissipation, dense current delivery, and automated handling.
Challenges in High-Power Burn-In Screening processors operating between
400W and 2,000W presents several connect- ed engineering challenges. Thermal density is one of the most significant. Forced-air en- vironments and passive heatsinks cannot re- liably maintain a stable, uniform junction temperature across a 1,000W+ silicon sub- strate. In multi-die packages, power is not al- ways distributed evenly between the com- pute logic and adjacent high-bandwidth memory (HBM) stacks. Without precise ther- mal management, localized hot spots can de- velop quickly and lead to thermal runaway. Current delivery is another major con-
straint. A high-wattage processor may require hundreds or even thousands of amperes at sub-1V core voltages. At those current levels, the resistance of the power delivery path can
s generative artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) continue to push semiconductor
create meaningful IR drop, making localized regulation essential. Power integrity is also critical because high-performance processors undergo rapid dynamic load changes during test vector execution. Without fast transient response and real-time loop regulation, volt- age droop or overshoot can invalidate results
The system uses a vertical chassis with
11 elevations and 22 slots or trays, with two trays per elevation. It provides up to 77 kW of total available power, with 3,500W allocat- ed per tray or 7,000W per elevation from a 54V input supply. This architecture supports up to 88 concurrent DUTs at 600W, 44 DUTs at 1,200W, or 22 DUTs at 2,000W with- in a single chamber footprint. Each DUT is supported by 128 independent I/O channels for clocking, testing, and output monitoring. Because floor space is a major con-
sideration in high-volume production, Sonoma is designed to deliver high pow- er density in a compact footprint. According to Aehr, one Sonoma system occupies less than one-third the floor space of a typical high-power burn-in system, helping manufacturers increase production volume per square foot.
Pluggable Power Delivery Traditional burn-in systems often
Aehr Sonoma burn-in and test system.
or damage hardware. The physical handling of high-power
burn-in hardware adds another layer of diffi- culty. Burn-in boards for these devices re- quire reinforced frames, large connectors, and heavy power dissipation components. Manually moving those assemblies into and out of test chambers can increase the risk of socket damage, extend loader idle time, and create ergonomic concerns for operators. As device values rise, reducing handling risk be- comes just as important as increasing throughput.
Sonoma Burn-In System Aehr Test Systems developed the Sonoma
high-power test and burn-in system to address these combined electrical, thermal, and opera- tional requirements. Configured for high-pow- er AI xPUs, the platform provides independ- ent test resources to each device under test (DUT), maintaining signal and power isola- tion across parallel testing.
rely on fixed backplane power supply configurations, limiting their ability to adapt when current requirements or device rail configurations change.
Sonoma replaces that approach with custom Burn-In Modules (BIMs) and a pluggable Device Power Supply (DPS) architecture. Engineers configure power delivery by
installing liquid-cooled DPS modules directly onto the BIM according to the target device’s rail configuration. Modules are available in multiple current ranges, including 8x12A, 4x40A, 200A, 340A, and 680A options. For ultra-high-current core rails, modules can be ganged together to deliver up to 2,720A on a single rail. Locating regulation modules close to the
socket minimizes the distance between the power source and the device, reducing path inductance and IR drop. To support power in- tegrity under dynamic loads, Sonoma also in- cludes Adaptive Voltage Scaling (AVS). The system reads leakage current or other device parameters and adjusts the stress voltage ac- cordingly, helping ensure that each device re- ceives the intended electrical stress during burn-in.
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