Draft:Frore Systems

Frore Systems Inc is a United States Company based in San Jose, CA, that designs and manufactures solid state active cooling chips known as “AirJet”. The company’s headquarters and research & development center is based in San Jose, CA. AirJets are manufactured in the company’s fabrication plant in Ho Kou Hsiang, Hsinchu County, Taiwan.

The AirJet is an embedded system that provides an alternative technology to traditional cooling systems like computer fans, heatsinks, vapor chambers and water cooling. The cooling chips use a piezeoelectric system that Frore Systems says is advantageous for electronic devices requiring a thinner, lighter form factors..

Heat limits the performance of computer hardware and chip performance. As consumers show increased preference for thinner, smaller electronic devices which decrease the ability to remove heat, manufacturers balance meeting the demand for a smaller form factor with compromising performance due to heat. According to company demonstrations and reviews by technical media, AirJet enables better thermal management for electronic devices to decrease or eliminate throttling. This is important as throttling performance due to heat results in performance loss.

Frore Systems was founded by Seshu Madhavapeddy and Surya Ganti in 2018. Seshu Madhavapeddy worked as a GM in Texas Instruments’ smartphones, after which he led product and technology at Samsung Mobile. Surya Ganti was a research scientist at General Electric developing “nanotextured” surfaces and algorithms for predicting the reliability of electromechanical systems. Madhavapeddy and Ganti also worked together at Qualcomm, where their experience with heat limited processors lead to their collaboration on AirJet.

The Technology
AirJet uses a microelectronic mechanical system involving a vibrating piezoelectric membrane to pull air into inlets at the top of the chip. The air is then pulled through the chip and uses a process called jet impingement to saturate the air with heat as it vertically impinges on the copper spreader integrated into the base of the chip. The spreader in the base of the chip is in direct contact with the heat source enabling the efficient transfer of heat to the air. The heat saturated air is then blown out the side of the host system. Heat being ejected from the host device can be visualized with a FLIR thermal camera.

History
Frore Systems, founded in 2018, emerged from stealth in December 2022, has raised $116 million in funding from investors including Qualcomm’s venture arm, Qualcomm Ventures, Mayfield, Addition and Clear Ventures. Intel is also planning to build AirJet into its Evo laptop reference program. . Intel’s VP of Mobile Innovation Josh Newman has stated “Frore Systems’ AirJet technology offers a new and novel approach to help achieve these design goals in new ways and Intel is excited about the engineering collaboration with Frore Systems to help ready their technology for future Intel Evo laptops.”

In May, 2022 the first Mini PC with AirJet was announced by Hong Kong based ZOTAC Technology Limited, a subsidiary of PC Partners. The PI430AJ is the first Mini PC to be cooled with AirJet and is considerably smaller than other available Mini PCs and was able to include an Intel Core i3-N300 as an upgrade from the traditional Celeron Series.

Products
There are two AirJet Chips, the AirJet Mini and AirJet Mini Slim. Both chips used solid state active cooling to remove heat from electronic devices.

AirJet Mini

In January 2023 at CES2023, Frore Systems launched AirJet Mini. The AirJet Mini is 2.8mm thick, 27.5mm long, 41.5mm wide and weighs 9 grams.

In November 2023, Frore Systems and AirJet installed three of AirJet Mini chips into a MacBook Air. Adding the three AirJet Mini to the MacBook Air, enabled the MacBook Air to performance to run faster for longer and to match the more powerful MacBook Pro. In November 2023, Popular Tech Reviewer, Linus Sebastien completed the same modification to a MacBook Air on an episode of Linus Tech Tips titled "Apple please watch this." and validated demonstration achieving the same performance gains AirJet Mini Slim

In January 2024 at CES2024, Frore Systems launched AirJet Mini Slim.

The AirJet Mini Slim has the same footprint as the AirJet Mini and generates the same high back pressure of 1750 pascals that enables the chip to remove 5.25 watts of heat (at 85°C die temperature and at 25°C ambient temperature), but is 2.5mm thick. It is also lighter at 8 grams. Frore Systems says the AirJet Mini Slim is also able to independently sense temperature, which enables it to optimize heat removal independently of the host system which is helpful for devices without a built-in ability to measure temperatures like processors, SSD controllers, and memory chips. The Company says that the AirJet Mini Slim also has a self cleaning mode that prevents dust from adversely impacting the operation of the device by reversing the air flow to displace any accumulated dust on the chip inlets.

Applications
Frore Systems says that AirJet is ideal for compact consumer electronics including the MacBook Air, Mini PC's, Notebooks, Webcams, SSD accessories, and LED lighting.

Awards
In May 2023, the Company was presented with the Golden Award at Computex 2022 for the AirJet Mini. The Award Judges stated that “With the AirJet Mini, consumer electronics can achieve 2x the system performance while being smaller, thinner, lighter weight, dust-resistant, and quieter than other cooling alternatives. Frore System has created a new frontier in tech development, with a solid-state active heat dissipating chip and all new thermal management algorithms. The chip allows for strategic market expansion, and applications in new models for marketing product strategies.”

In August 2023, the company was presented with the Flash Memory Summit, Most Innovative Flash Memory Startup Award.

At the Flash Memory Summit Conference in San Jose CA in August 2023, Frore Systems demonstrated that AirJet remove 40W of heat from from a 64TB SSD device without using traditional cooling approaches like fan, heatsinks or liquid cooling. "

In January 2024, Frore Systems was presented with the CES2024 Best of Innovation award, in addition to being recognized as an honoree in both the Imbedded Technologies and Computer Hardware and Components Categories for the AirJet Mini. The CES Innovation Award, - run by the Consumer Technology association - are highly competitive with over 3000 competitors, a record 40% increase in submissions over the previous year.