New Chip-cooling Technology

BillOfThePecosKind writes "Researchers have demonstrated a new technology using tiny "ionic wind engines" that might dramatically improve computer chip cooling, possibly addressing a looming threat to future advances in computers and electronics. Purdue researchers funded by Intel have improved the "heat-transfer coefficient" by some 250%. I never liked water cooled systems, and this sounds promising. However I wonder how much ozone one of these things produces."

Comments

Re:ozone

[ricebowl]

FWIS The "ionic wind" takes place inside a sealed chamber, no ozone would be leaking out.

I'm possibly being naive, and I've yet to read the featured article, but if the ionic wind is inside a sealed chamber how does it aid cooling? Surely the sealed chamber would simply grow warmer over time and become a thermal insulator?

If I'm being dumb please don't hesitate to retort or point out the flaws in my thinking...

Re:Didn't we already do this one?

[Tyger]

And if you RTFA, you'd see that this has as much in common with those past articles as a desktop fan pointed at a CPU has with a heatsink with a fan attached.

New Technology?

[nurb432]

Hmm then what is this 'Ionic breeze' thing sitting beside me that is blowing air around my room with no fans or other moving parts? Or the industrial electrostatic cleaners that have been around for decades longer?

New application of really old technology would be a bit more accurate.

Re:Ozone production FTW

[Rakishi]

In fact, ozone has quite a beneficial property in correct quantities, including cancer therapy, mold or smoke eradication, even water treatment (most high end swimming pools use ozone rather than very harmful chemicals such as chlorine). ...All except one of those involve killing living organisms. Rat poison is also damn useful but I wouldn't want it in the air or eating it.

Re:CFCs and HCFCs

[got2liv4him]

Unfortunately, they are working on banning hcfc's as well. And all civilian have been required to use hfc's since '95. (you probably just got mixed up). Europe is already talking about banning hfc's. I am interested to know what they plan on using, propane?, co2?, ammonia. How do we know that the ozone layer doesn't naturally? I mean it closed back up, and I highly doubt it was because we stopped using r-12 and r-502. Seriously, how do we know that the hole was caused by cfc's, I would think if it was and the cfc's somehow defied gravity and got up to the ozone layer there would be multiple holes? P. S. I work on a/c's.

Power consumption, anyone??

[wvmarle]

Now this is all interesting and so, but what about making those chips be a bit more power efficient for starters? I mean save some remaining high-end applications, modern processing power is enough. More than enough for 99% of the applications.

It'd be nice if the CPUs would become more power efficient, that has so many advantages: lower power bills, saving the environment, longer battery life for laptops, silent computers for less need of cooling, etc. For now it seems every new incarnation of the major CPUs (Intel, AMD) is wasting only more power!

Keeping the chip cool is not the problem

[AmiMoJo]

Try running a Core 2 Quad and 8800 Ultra together - your PC will become a space heater. Nice in the winter perhaps but not good for hot summers without air conditioning. All this will do is keep the CPU a bit cooler, but the same amount of heat will be generated.

Re:CFCs and HCFCs

[Gr8Apes]

For a given system, R134a refrigerant is less effective than R12, or other replacements. George Goble is the guy that lobbied for and lost the bid to replace R12 with a relatively inexpensive superior performing propane/iso-butane mixture. R134 performs worse, requires larger condensors, and has less heat carrying capacity. Additionally, should the condenser hit 214+F it won't work at all. The summer temps here regularly hit over 100, and in full sun on black asphalt you'll get a nice cozy 140+. Add in engine compartment heat where (surprise!!) the condenser sits....

If you've never had the pleasure of entering a dark colored car sitting out on asphalt for 8+ hours in full sun on a 115 degree day and turn on the AC and get hit with cold air, and then do the same with any R134 equipped car, you don't know what you're talking about. One last note, R134 did improve on one issue that used to be a problem with R12 systems: R134 systems don't suffer from freeze lock (that'd be where the evaporator in the dash gets so cold that water freezes onto it, blocking air flow and killing your cooling power).

So yes, R12 performs far better than R134. If you're willing to void your warranty, you can improve the performance of your R134 system by doping it with propane and iso-butane and approach the performance of an R12 system.