HomeForumsWhat's newResources 
 
 
Self Cooling Chips
IceDigger - Mar 30, 2004
  IceDigger Mar 30, 2004
Article...

Thought you might find this interesting. Using nano-technology to cool down our future technology. Very cool stuff!

 racketboy Mar 30, 2004
being cool is cool

 mal Mar 30, 2004
I read about this last week and it's got at least one hurdle yet to clear:


  
	
	

		
		

			Suresh Garimella, who led the research and is a bit of a chip-cooling guru, has a word of caution: the team doesn’t know how efficiently the voltage produces electrons. Unused voltage will be converted to heat, which is a bit of a problem in a cooling system. 



However, the team has managed to use the system to cool metal, and is confident it could be built into a chip.


Source: The Register...

Still, it does sound promising.

 Alexvrb Mar 31, 2004
Interesting, but it is just another cooling method... it doesn't solve the current trend of chips dumping more and more heat out. Why not just integrate watercooling blocks into the processors instead of heatspeaders ? Even Intel pointed out that at this rate, chips are going to be supernova-hot if things don't change. That's part of why they're shifting technology gears, look at the Pentium M as an example.

 ExCyber Mar 31, 2004
For a more radical example, the stuff Transmeta is doing makes Pentium M's power-saving features look like a joke.

 Alexvrb Mar 31, 2004
Yes, but I didn't use that as an example because of the issue of performance. We're not yet so desperate that we need to downgrade speed. The real advantages of the Transmeta chips are the lower power consumption, as you mentioned. But I was talking more about heat. Transmeta chips are nice for super-slim laptops, though.

 ExCyber Apr 4, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			We're not yet so desperate that we need to downgrade speed.


Power consumption scales with speed, as CMOS gates only consume power when they change states. And some people are so desperate that they're moving to Transmeta and VIA chips. Not for "enthusiast" use, but because they've got racks full of them and their cooling and power costs are getting out of hand.


  
	
	

		
		

			The real advantages of the Transmeta chips are the lower power consumption, as you mentioned. But I was talking more about heat.


Heat scales with power consumption. The less power the chip uses, the less it converts to heat, and AMD/Intel have been cranking up the current for years to increase clock speeds and superscalar operation. It used to be that a CPU fan was unheard of for consumer systems; now a system without one is considered novel.

 Alexvrb Apr 4, 2004
I know that. But it isn't that bad yet. Also, there's more to it than that... the process shrinks, problems with leakage getting worse, etc. The Pentium M is such a good example because it doesn't sacrifice performance. It is actually quite fast. Transmeta and VIA chips are slow as balls, comparatively. But they can be used in smaller systems. What they've learned from the Pentium M will doubtless show up in their desktop chips as well. They'll continue to fight the problem, and yes innovative cooling solutions can always help.

 antime Apr 4, 2004
The latest P4s have a maximum power consumption of over a hundred Watts, what do you consider "bad"? The Pentium-M is nice, but apparently Intel haven't been able to ramp up the speed as expected and lags behind the P4 performance-wise.

Personally, I'm at the stage where I'd be quite happy to trade performance for a cool, quiet machine. I've spent way too much to get the noise level of my machine down to an acceptable level and I'll still be unable to use it during the summer. If such a thing existed, a cheap Power-based machine would be perfect, especially once IBM release their 750VX. I've also been casting lustful glances at industrial computers... but £1600 is a bit too much.

 it290 Apr 4, 2004
You could always go for one of these if money is no object:

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20040115/...

 antime Apr 5, 2004
Great, a two-ton metal chunk just for a comfortable working environment. Thanks, but I think I'll pass.

As I mentioned some time earlier, I've been looking at the Pegasos board, and while they're out now and the 1GHz G4 model would suit my intended uses quite nicely the whole company and organization is such a mess I don't know if I want to spend my money on it.

 Alexvrb Apr 8, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by antime@Apr 4, 2004 @ 08:20 PM



 Personally, I'm at the stage where I'd be quite happy to trade performance for a cool, quiet machine. I've spent way too much to get the noise level of my machine down to an acceptable level and I'll still be unable to use it during the summer.


Shove a laptop Athlon in a desktop machine. They're even coming out with an Athlon 64 that is around 35 watts. Also, I haven't heard of Intel having any problem getting Pentium M up to speed. They've got new chips on the roadmap, and there's the Conroe rumors to boot. On top of that, there are relatively inexpensive+quiet solutions still. The biggest source of noise in my system right now is the HDs, well one of them anyway.

What I consider to be too hot is when you can't dissipate the heat fast enough without a noisy fan, no matter how good your cooler design (expensive solutions aside). We're not there yet, and I figure that we'll see good performing and relatively cool chips from AMD and Intel as well as higher-end "performance king" chips.