Slashdot Mirror
New 3D CPU Water Cooling Method
captain igor writes "According to this story on Wired News, a new company launched by researchers from Stanford has come up with a way to layer a silicon network of tiny tubes on top of a microprocessor. The system then uses a solid-state motor (no moving parts!) to pipe cold water through the silicon network. According to the article, this system can handle 1000 watts (yes, a kilowatt) per square centimeter."
I'm still wary about pumping water into my computer. What if one of those microthin pipes were to burst? Then you'd get a microsized stream of water shorting out your not-so-micro-priced processor. I'll stick to windtunnels and heatsinks... maybe a heatpipe or two.
It's not a solid state motor. I dare say, there's no such thing. By definition, a motor turns, therefore it has moving parts. In fact, the word "motor" appears nowhere in the article, so I'm not sure where the submitter dreamt that up.
It's a solid state pump that moves an electrolyte through it using osmotic pressure.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
This is pretty cool, and I thank the poster and slashdot editors for putting up the story. I just thought that this was funny:
:)
Apple, Intel, DARPA and Cooligy did not respond to requests for comment.
Well that includes just about everyone mentioned in the article, so exactly where did the information come from? I see, I'm reading a posting about an article about another article about information gleaned from a website. Oh, well at least they told me
A typical stove top burner is order of magnitude 1000 watts spread out over around 500 sq cm: so were talking order of magnitude less than 10 watts per sq cm.
if I take a teaspoon of water an put it on a sq cm of stove top and it boils in far less than a second. really almost instantly so its probably like less than a tenth of a second.
Thus if this thing is going to not explode, the flow rate required to avoid boiling at 1000 watts /sq cm is going to be on the order of hundreds to thousands of teaspoons per second.
If I take a tiny swizzel straw and try to suck through it I cannot suck 1000 teaspoos per second. Since my ability to suck is probably within an order of magnitude of the cavitation pressure for atmospheric pressure water a pump trying to flow this stuff through an equally small crossecttion may not be able to sustain such a flow rate. And any on-chip pump is probably going to have a simmilar crossection for its fluid intake port. (off -chip is another matter)
unless this thing is actually flowing the water based on the steam pressure itself, I'm skeptical that this can meet the claimed specs.
but I assume these people aren't fools. Perhaps the science reporter slipped a few digits.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Considering the consequences of a little algea or whatever in tubes so small, I'm sure they'll provide the coolant(likely non-water) and perhaps even an on board Closed coolant system.
Considering the size of 3rd party coolants shown on site's like Tweak3d.net I wouldn't be suprised at all if the setups didn't look like some of ThermalTakes larger models.
If most of the tubing is kept in the in-die, and the motor is solid state (not sure what size we're talking about) then I'd envision something that would leak about as mutch as an air cooled system. hehe.
"Oh... There it goes... my brain stopped" - Ed from Ed, Edd, and Eddy.
Put it in the main CPU, not just the GPU. That way we can get rid of the screaming banshees/cooling fans in our towers. (So you can leave your favorite p2p running overnight without the whirrrrrrrring)
I hate that stuff like this gets modded off-topic. Where is the forum to discuss things like this? God knows that Taco will never admit that the site has problems from time to time.
I agree, and it looks like someone (or a couple someones) used up all their mod points nailing this thread offtopic.
Now I consider it ok to mod the first post or maybe a couple subsequent posts offtopic, but threads like this also serve to let people know that they aren't the only ones experiencing problems. This can prevent a lot of head-banging or wondering whether their ISP is choking. So please don't blanket mod everything in a thread like this offtopic. It's rude and counterproductive.
Fer chrissakes, mods, use some sense.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
my post erred because the reason the water boils is not the heat flux but the stored heat in the stove top coil. The transient delivery of this stored heat vastly exceeds the rate of power delivered to the stove and thus the water boils fast. but this would not be sustained.
I withdraw my original answer.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Don't go there. It's goatse related.
And people assume a lot of things. People like you.
/ 1822219&mode=thread&tid=137&tid=180
Are the heat pipes, thermal paste, and ducting behind the CPUs on the G5s for the "efficiency?"
Those suckers get HOT. No assumptions necessary. THAT'S WHY APPLE IS MENTIONED IN THE ARTICLE. But don't trust that, why not ask Apple themselves?
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/18
I ASSUME that you have information that this info straight from Apple is incorrect?
http://iambitterandjustplainwrong.org. Now mod me down for correcting a kool-aid drinking Apple zealot.