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Startup Offers Peltier-On-Chip
LowSNR writes "The South Carolina based startup Nextreme, Inc. is developing technology to put Peltier Coolers in chip packages, according to an Ars Technica report. The tiny coolers could be situated on top of local hotspots on the die and pump heat away through a package pin to the motherboard. Also, the Seebeck Effect allows the waste heat to be used to be harvested to generate/reclaim power."
That's cool.
Har har.
I think the heat recycling aspect itself shows some promise, and the design being built into the chip, but we have to consider that the same kind of designers that use these are just as likely to push the chip beyond the capabilities in terms of the total heat reduction for the system.
People who tend to overclock or use overclocked chips, will frequently push the envelope even further if they think they can get away with it.
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Call me when they put a miniature Sterling engine on a chip and use it to recharge the battery.
Can I use the excess heat from my P4 to produce the energy for my p4?
Only if you use IPv6 on the motherboard and IPv4 on the daughterboard.
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Peltier devices on-chip have been used for a while, whenever temperature variations are intolerable. Some examples: Analog Devices AD595 thermocouple amp, which uses in-chip thermal calibration to ensure a cold junction of known temperature, and many voltage regulators and switching supply controllers that use temperature-controlled bandgaps as their voltage reference.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
In theory, yes; the chip is hotter than its environment, so you can put a heat engine between them and generate energy. The maximum theoretical efficiency of this process is given by Carnot cycle and depends on the heat difference between the processor and the environment and the temperature of the environment. With current processors you can't really exceed 60 degree Celsius, or 333 Kelvin, and the environment is typically at 20 degree Celsius, or 293 Kelvin, so the maximum theoretical efficiency is around 12%.
Of course, if you could find more durable materials, you could just insulate the processor, let it heat up to a thousand degree Celsius or so, and get nearly 77 percent efficiency. The hotter you run the processor, the more efficient the system becomes; a hypothetical plasma-state processor at 10,000K would give a theoretical efficiency of 97%.
It would also give a whole new meaning to "flamebait" ;).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The PCB is often used as a heatsink for SMD chips. It wouldn't work too well for a CPU, unless we adopt a new form factor with a surface area of 5,490 cm^2, or roughly a 2.5' square (and it would need a lot of heatpipes to make up for the extra distance between the CPU and the edges of the heatsink).
... Cool Ranch chips?
No, having an idea is where it all begins. Not doing anything with that idea is what's worth squat. Guilty!
I once thought of tossing one of these thermoelectric (TEC) coolers in my system to try and help with waste heat, but the trouble with the seebeck effect is that it reaches a cutoff point fairly quickly. You see, the "cool" side of the tec doesn't remain cool, it heats up as well meaning that the temperature difference grows gradually smaller and smaller, which in turn reduces output of voltage and becomes a vicious cycle, building up more and more heat on the hot side.
TEC's are great when using the peltier effect since the electric side can be managed easily, so long as there is a way to pump away the waste heat. But the seebeck effect is not a solution to waste heat, not unless there is a breakthrough in efficiency i'm not aware of.
It counts for a lot, provided you have enough to file a patent.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
Never heard of carnot efficiency before, have you?
Any energy recovered from this small temperature differential would be miniscule compared to the initial cost of putting a stirling engine in a computer. It costs energy to run the peltier plate as a heat pump, if you want low power it'd be less difficult and cheaper to just build a bigger heat sink.