"Cool" Micro-Technologies Make Hot Chips Chill

LONDON, Oct 26, 2006 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- At the BroadGroup Power and Cooling Summit here today, IBM (IBM) researchers presented an innovative approach for improving the cooling of computer chips, an increasingly urgent need given the large amount of heat released by today's more powerful processors and the additional energy required for removing that heat.

From Cnet:

IBM gives chips a cooling rinse

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Someday, you may hose off your microprocessor with water to keep it from overheating.

Researchers at IBM's Zurich labs have developed a "chip cap" filled with a network of channels that can help capture the heat generated by microprocessors and other semiconductors and transport it somewhere else. The design of the hierarchical channels was inspired by similar branching systems found in nature, said IBM, which disclosed details about the project at the Power and Cooling for Data Centres Summit taking place in London this week.

So far, the researchers have demonstrated how the cap can help spread thermal grease more evenly. Thermal grease is a particle-filled substance that conducts heat from the chip to another component, called a heat sink. The idea is to make the layer of grease as thin as possible.

But the team also plans to experiment with ways of squirting water through the channels, using a technique called "direct jet impingement." In this system, the squirted water would be prevented from touching the electronics by the channels and be sucked out quickly. Some server chips have included liquid-filled pipes placed near microprocessors to cool off chips.

In initial laboratory tests of the water system, the Zurich team has demonstrated cooling power densities of up to 370 watts per square centimeter. Conventional air cooling technologies are effective on 75-watt surfaces.

KryoTech freon-based CPU cooling systems had already been available for a while when the "Renegade" came out. The "classic" KryoTech system cooled CPUs down to minus 40 degrees Celsius, allowing overclocking far beyond what's possible with conventional cooling. But since the price for the -40°C system was very high, KryoTech came out with a "light" version of their cooling system, the "Renegade". It used the same cooling technology as the classic KryoTech systems, but keeps the CPU only at room temperature. Thus, no special precautions against condensation (the biggest problem with supercooled systems) needed to be taken, making the system is significantly cheaper. Also, the Renegade used a different compressor (made by Electrolux; the classic KryoTech systems used Danfoss compressors). In order to be able to offer the system at a lower cost, KryoTech had not sacrificed product quality - the case was the same as on the -40°C system, and the entire system left an impression of high quality and good design.

There were two version of the Renegade: The ATX-SE (for "Standard Edition"), and ATX-PE (for "Premium Edition"). The Premium edition additionally came with an LCD display, which permanently displayed the temperature at the cold plate, and a control circuit that shuts down the system when the CPU temperature reaches 55°C. Each version was available either for Slot One CPUs (Celeron, Pentium II, Pentium III), and for Socket 7 (Celeron 370, K6, 6x86MX). Upgrades were only possible within a processor range. The price is of the system was $349/$399 (Socket 7/370 Standard/Premium) or $359/$409 (Slot One Standard/Premium).

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