Slashdot Mirror
Ultra Efficient Chip Cooling Passes Boeing Tests
joelgrimes writes "A company called Cool Chips plc is showing off a cooling device that claims unbelievable efficiencies using what they call 'quantum mechanical electron tunneling'. A choice quote from their press release: "A panel of Cool Chips one inch square will provide enough cooling for a refrigerator; a panel about two inches square will have the capacity to provide the air conditioning for a living room". They also mention using them to cool microprocessors. I used to think this company was nuts, but Boeing is making me think twice. Oh, and by the way, they work in reverse to make electricity from heat. Should I sell my baseball cards and buy their stock now, or can an army of slashdotters poke holes in their claims?" Fascinating stuff. Makes peltier coolers look pretty old school. In the press release they claim up to 80% efficiency, compared to 5-8% for peltier coolers and 50% for conventional refrigeration. I will say the cool chips corporate logo is baffling, though.
We have been workingb on asynchronous chips which slow down when the chip heats up. The problem with having super high heat producing chips and a great big super high enegry sucking heat sink is that the chip will have hot and cold regions. These hotspots will get hotter as the gradient gets larger. The problem is that clocked design will not be able to cope with a small area of the chip being slow. Anly a very localy generated clock can cope with it and slow down the circuit.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
The company is run out of a tax haven. A mere three weeks after they get NASD trading approval, up pops an article on Slashdot - complete with vague but reassuring press release from a big [but likely dumb] name, Boeing. Then you go to their site - KewlChips have lots of vague but reassuring information about their governance and pedigree, and look, kids, you can invest now!
I quote from their Investor Relations page:
"Cool Chips plc common shares were cleared for trading in the United States by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) on 24 April 2002. Quotes are available from www.pinksheets.com under the symbol COLCF. The Cool Chips Technology work is managed out of Europe and we are a virtual company based in the European Union. Your Company is a member of the Borealis Family of Companies, and is incorporated in Gibraltar. Gibraltar law is essentially English law and we are governed by that. We have elected to use Gibraltar GAAP as our reporting standards, as these are the standards of our domicile.
In addition to the Investor Information available for our parent company, Borealis Exploration Limited, links to corporate information specific to Cool Chips plc are located at http://www.coolchips.gi/investor/corpinfo.shtml
Stock quotes can be found at:
Pink Sheets: BOREF COLCF Bloomberg: BOREF COLCF "
Does that sound like pandering to you? It sure does to me, and my wallet is firmly tucked away.
Just remember... their own statement is that they are a virtual company run out of a tax haven. Caveat emptor. Don't throw your SlashDollars away.
Reading their technology explanation, the idea certainly seems reasonable enough! The trick being of course in the manufacturing of the two very close but seperated layers.
If I understood their physics-for-dummies explanation correctly, the principle relies on two metals separated by a very thin gap; a potential difference across the plates encourages tunneling of electrons across the gap, carrying heat with them.
IANAP, but I'm sure someone here is: doesn't vibration at the atomic scale in some crystalline medium also act like a particle? Can these guys also tunnel across gaps, or is their weird quantum nature restricted to the single medium they're expressed in? If they could tunnel, I would have thought that as the heat differential across the plates increased, their tunneling would also increase, acting as a break on the process and bringing about an equilibrium situation (temperature differential vs. potential differential.) Or is the mechanism for equilibrium simply black-body radiation across the gap, or similar?
What sort of temperature differentials are possible through a device like this? Is it only limited by mechanical constraints?
Hope these thoughts aren't entirely moronic.
To vaporise that gas it drained the heat-energy from the drink and therefore instantly cooled it.
It's probably cheaper than Coolchip too.