Wriggling Heat Sinks

YourHero writes "Purdue researchers have come up with a new way to cool chips, in about 2 years. Just build a bunch of little piezoelectric fans (the waving kind, not the spinning kind). Since they don't spin, no bearings, less self-generated heat. Since they don't have magnets, no electromagnetic noise problems. And, of course, super-efficient. A press release and abstract for your reading pleasure. Formal presentation at THERMES 2002 Jan 15th."

Comments

Re:Why not just make cooler running chips?

[TeknoHog]

Why don't you just propose a design for such a better chip? I thought so.

Half seriously, though, you might think of superconducting chips to eliminate the heating due to the resistance in aluminium/copper wires. But AFAIK you can't build logic circuits entirely out of superconductors. The siliconductors (sic :-) we now use, require current to pass through potential differences (energy gaps in the crystal structure). Power dissipated equals current times potential difference, period. And there are lower limits for the voltage imposed by the semiconductor used.

Until we get something entirely different, I'm quite happy to put my geekineering effort into the design of better cooling. I'm sure it can be almost as fun as inventing new kinds of logic chips.