Slashdot Mirror
IBM Water-Cools 3D Multi-Core Chip Stacks
An anonymous reader writes "Water cooling will enable multi-core processors to be stacked into 3D cubes, according to IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory which is demonstrating three-dimensional chip stacks. By stacking memory chips between processor cores IBM plans to multiply interconnections by 100 times while reducing their feature size tenfold. To cool the stack at a rate of 180 watts per layer, water flows down 50-micron channels between the stacked chips. Earlier this year, the same group described a copper-plate water cooling method for IBM's Hydro-Cluster supercomputer. The Zurich team predicts high-end IBM multicore computers will migrate from the copper-plate water-cooling-method to the 3-D chip-stack in five to 10 years." Reader Lilith's Heart-shape adds a link to the BBC's article on these internally-cooled chips.
Water cooling is great for the bleeding edge enthusiast, but it's hardly an option for the workaday computer users. Laptops certainly could stand to use some better heat dissipation, and if water cooling through 50nm tubes is possible here, how long until it is both cost effective and size-effective for people who aren't interested in hardware for its own sake to see this type of thing offered to us, the average computer user?
And is stacking the chips better than laying them flat and in a strip (like Pentium M)?