Apple Hints At Future Liquid-Cooled Laptops

Lumenary7204 writes "According to the Register, Apple recently received US Patent Application No. 20080291629 for a 'liquid-cooled portable computer.' The filing describes a system where a 'pump ... coupled to the heat pipe is configured to circulate the liquid coolant through the heat pipe.' All claims of obviousness aside (after all, PC enthusiasts have been using liquid and phase-change cooling for years), the existence of the patent application seems to indicate that laptop manufacturers are in agreement with physicists and engineers who say we are running up against the practical limits of air-cooling such compact pieces of equipment."

Comments

This won't fly.

[retech]

Literally, it won't fly. Getting one on an plane would be impossible anywhere in north America.

Re:This won't fly.

[CRCulver]

TSA has already announced that they are relaxing the no liquids rule.

Re:This won't fly.

[ksatyr]

More to the point, if it does fly, when it hits the ground will the liquid make a mess as it leaks out?

Re:This won't fly.

[Captain Splendid]

will the liquid make a mess as it leaks out?

Wrong question.

Will it blend?

Re:This won't fly.

[Atti K.]

"Sir, you are required to remove the cooling liquid from the computer, put it into this container, which we'll put into this sealed bag. After landing you are free to put it back."

Re:This won't fly.

[bazorg]

Apple will build a user-accessible liquid coolant tank and will sell small bottles with coolant of different colours and scents. Even printer ink manufacturers will be jealous of the margins :)

Re:This won't fly.

[ChunderDownunder]

'Hit' the ground??? This is an Apple laptop; the reality distortion field will morph the pavement as it descends.

Re:This won't fly.

[Nerdfest]

It`s sad, but I think this should probably be modded informative rather than funny.

Re:This won't fly.

[clickety6]

No more mess than the liquid that will leak out of you if you hit the ground when flying.

Re:This won't fly.

[RMH101]

They've had it on Mac Pros for years.
What could possibly go wrong?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1464395&tstart=990

It's another built-in-defect waiting to happen, along with the dodgy Nvidia GPUs in Macbook Pros, those heat-deaths of HDDs in Macbooks etc...

Re:This won't fly.

[PancakeMan]

Literally, it won't fly. Getting one on an plane would be impossible anywhere in north America.

You're assuming the laptop won't fit in a Ziploc baggie...

Re:This won't fly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple will build a user-accessible liquid coolant tank and will sell small bottles with coolant of different colours and scents.

Apple Juice?

Re:This won't fly.

[jank1887]

great. then we'll have to wait through some other "Apple" trademark dispute.

Re:This won't fly.

[theaveng]

You hit the nail on the head. Everybody has, at one point or another, experienced liquid leaking from their water heater, or air conditioner, or car radiator. It creates a mess, an expensive repair, and a shorter operational lifespan versus an air-cooled device. ("My g5 liquid cooled computer...is leaking and dripped onto my power supply. I am looking at a little under a thousand dollars for repair...with less than 2 years of actual use.")

I'd much prefer choosing the air-cooled PC with no moving parts (except a fan), even if that means I only run at 3000 megahertz instead of 6000. All I do is surf the net or stream Heroes off nbc.com, and I'm happy to take a slightly slower "engine" inside my computer (just as my Honda Insight only has 67hp). I don't need a lot of power for my daily routine and neither do most people.

Re:This won't fly.

[__aamnbm3774]

Given the lifespan of a laptop is less than 5 years typically... How many people do you know who have had Car Radiator leaks on their automobile less than 5 years after they purchased it brand new??

Where is the tag for FearMongering?

Re:This won't fly.

[skeeto]

Just tell TSA it is cooled by saline solution, which has no limitations. 'Cause, ... uh ... you keep your contact lenses inside your computer.

Re:This won't fly.

[mrchaotica]

(just as my Honda Insight only has 67hp)

Your Insight is water-cooled. Therefore, you should sell it [to me] and buy an air-cooled VW Beetle.

: )

Re:This won't fly.

[bigjarom]

That is the question

Re:This won't fly.

[RMH101]

Here's the thing. It wasn't really an argument. It was a slightly-tongue-in-cheek post pointing out that over the last few years, Apple's hardware has had significant issues. In short, their engineering-fu, their quality control, and their balance of form vs engineering seem out of wack.

I've been a Mac user for about 2-3 years, and in that time I've seen:

* Macbook: known issues with discolouring to top casing - design defect
* cracking top cases on MBs acknowledged as design defect. Happened to me and they fixed it, but it's a sign of poor hardware QC
* millions of seagate drives in Macbooks dying horrible heat deaths, due to poor basic thermal design of the laptop - all documented and acknowledged as a design fault
* those 1st gen Macbooks that shipped with huge amounts of thermal gunk on their heatsinks, leading to overheating problems
* batches of faulty swelling batteries
* replacement program for Macbook and Macbook Pro PSUs - in the main due to the lack of a strain relief on the magsafe end - a design decision
* millions of MBPs shipped with faulty Nvidia GPUs due to Nvidia manufacturing defect
* the brand new MB's exhibiting heat-related GPU lockups and failures
* iPhones with cracking casings due to plastics used

I'm sure there's more, but my basic thesis is they used to make great hardware and software. They now make great *looking* hardware and great software, and have a high incidence of hardware failure down to either poor QA or bad design decisions, where form has taken precedence over function.
I still buy Apple hardware like the tart I am, but I also buy Applecare now.
I'm not a hardware engineer but even I think that the fact my 17" Macbook Pro (lovely as it is apart from the Nvidia ticking time bomb inside it) gets too hot to touch in places during normal use Isn't A Good Thing.
If the reason for adding liquid cooling is so they can make the things a fraction slimmer, I'd say I wouldn't trust them at present to get the balance right, and I'd prefer an extra mm of thickness versus yet another dodgy Rev A hardware release.

Re:This won't fly.

[theaveng]

Well the person I quoted in my post only had his computer for 3 years, as have many other PowerMac owners, and it already started leaking in just that short timespan, so your attempt to dismiss the problem so casually is an epic fail.

As for my avoidance of constant upgrades:

My Commodore 64 is over twenty years old, one of my laptops is about ten years, my second laptop is five, and my desktop PC is also five. If any of them were liquid-cooled, they'd likely be dead by now due to fluid leakage. Liquid cooling shortens lifespans faster than air cooling. Why do I keep things so long? One reason is because there are those of us who were not born with a silverspoon in our mouths, and therefore we have to economize and make things last rather than upgrade every other year.

The second reason is the same reason why I drive a 67 horsepower car; I don't need a pocket rocket either to get to work, or to surf the net. I don't buy into the whole "conspicuous consumption" idea that many Americans (including yourself) like to embrace. I think it's foolish and a waste and the key reason why our economy is hovering on the brink of a second Depression. You casually dismiss this as "fearmongering" but I call it intelligent budgeting. I'm proud to say that I have no debt; can you say the same?

Re:This won't fly.

[theaveng]

Not so far-fetched. Owners of the new Mercedes and Volkswagen diesels have to buy periodic refills of urea which is then used to neutralize soot from the exhaust. Of course they don't call it urea. It's "anti pollution liquid".

Re:This won't fly.

[__aamnbm3774]

Again, I would really love to request the FearMongering tag for this pompous author.

Oh wise non-Americans (including yourself) please teach us how to be as great as thee!

Re:This won't fly.

[b4dc0d3r]

I don't need a lot of power for my daily routine and neither do most people.

And you think 3 gHz isn't too much for that? By the time the tech is ready and stable (and after the first-adopters work out the kinks), we will need 6 gHz just to stream Heroes.

Re:This won't fly.

[__aamnbm3774]

...not to mention you didn't answer my question anyway. my point is that car radiators have been improved upon and have become very stable over the years. I don't doubt the first generations of liquid cooling PCs would be problematic.

Second, I have no debt, I live well within my means, and what the HELL are you talking about anyway?

You are the pinnacle of a dork trying to win an argument by screaming the loudest. Stay on topic and take your A.D.D. medicine. ok?

Re:This won't fly.

[Iztaci]

"Literally, it won't fly." That's the oldest, tiredest, stupidest line since Zogg said it after his first glance at the wheel. Orville and Wilbur's grandfather, a circuit judge, said it about the flying machine.

Re:This won't fly.

[jasen666]

As a bench technician whose had his hands on and in just about every model of PowerMac and PowerBook Apple ever made: This is nothing new.
They made some models almost bullet proof. And some were just bad ideas. Anyone remember the powerbook 5300's? They were still replacing hinges on those things for free years after they stopped making them.
How about the Duo 2300? The logic board and power management boards made contact through pressure from the top and bottom cases--too much or too little torque on the wrong case screws and the machine wouldn't power on. That was a bitch.
Or my favorite Apple lemon of all time: the Color Laserwriter 12/600. It was a gigantic 100lb beast, overly-complicated design, took 4 toner cartridges, and never worked right. I pray to never see one again.

I will say this: when they determine a problem is a design flaw, they are great about fixing/replacing affected parts. Many manufacturers can't say that.

Re:This won't fly.

[geekoid]

I've seen liquid cooled computers run for years.
The fact that some enthusiast don't have a clue on how to do it is besides the point.

I agree with you n that I would prefer air cooled.
It would be really ideal if they would focus on a good robust multi-core applications and OS design. Many Cores could run cooler if the are each dedicated to fewer tasks.

Re:This won't fly.

[cayenne8]

"I don't need a lot of power for my daily routine and neither do most people."

Ahh, but young grasshopper, you are confusing "needs" with "wants".

I, like many people...start with a "want"...and it immediately becomes a "need".

:)

Sorry, but dammit...I LOVE toys.

Re:This won't fly.

[theaveng]

>>>pompous author.

Where's the "doesn't know how to make an argument without ad hominem attacks" tag?

Re:This won't fly.

[bettega]

Why not put the components upside down? The liquid cooler would run under and leak in the flor - it could work, at least in desktops.

Re:This won't fly.

[Creepy]

There are liquid coolers now being sold that are fully sealed rather than sealed using gaskets, and the potential for a leak with such systems is much smaller than traditional gasket coolers, however, there is usually no way to inspect, clean, or add coolant to these (they would need to be replaced).

Looking at the patent, I see two differences to traditional liquid cooling that could be the entire basis of the patent. Claim 16: metal particles in the coolant, and Claim 19: a cold plate (which could mean many things, even wild solutions like a miniature Sterling Engine, though I would think it's something simple).

Here's my breakdown of the patent, at least to my understanding:

Claim 1 - this is specific to a computing system with liquid cooling of the power source.

Claim 2 - the IC included in the power source contains a processor. This makes me think the IC is a controller for the pump because the claim is for the power source, not the laptop itself.

Claim 3-11 specifics about pump and coolants

Claim 12 - used in a laptop

Claim 13 - 15 - dual phase (typical phase change coolant from liquid to gas and back)

Claim 16 - metal particles in the coolant to increase thermal transfer.

Claim 17 - describes pump activity

Claim 18 - describes a heatsink

Claim 19 - a cold plate for increased thermal transfer

Claim 20 - describes the lithography size of the laptop (how small the wires are).

Claim 21 - describes using liquid cooling on the laptop itself.

Re:This won't fly.

[Abreu]

VW stopped production of air-cooled Beetles in 2003

The so-called "New-Beetle" is liquid-cooled like any other modern car

Re:This won't fly.

[cayenne8]

". I don't buy into the whole "conspicuous consumption" idea that many Americans (including yourself) like to embrace. I think it's foolish and a waste and the key reason why our economy is hovering on the brink of a second Depression. You casually dismiss this as "fearmongering" but I call it intelligent budgeting. I'm proud to say that I have no debt; can you say the same?"

Well, the key to it all is live within your means.

If you have money to spend on new toys, nothing wrong with it. I actually have pretty much everything I've ever really wanted in life as far as toys go....so I don't want many more. I do, usually see one good one a year and get it...something fairly big. Last year, it was a nice motorcycle. This year a couple of nice (52"-60")flat screen tvs since I just moved into a new, larger place. But, I don't get into debt....I did that once way back, and vowed never again. I try save up for 99% of things so I can pay with cash, or if I charge something, I don't carry a balance more than 1 or two months max. I rent right now...but, am saving for a house. I was between contracts for a few months (great timing, was during the spring/summer during great motorcycle riding time) so I have an unusual CC balance of about $3K right now that I will pay off very soon.

But, there is no reason to deride someone for buying beyond what the "need", as long as they can afford it. As long as you live within your means, nothing wrong with treating yourself a little. Life is too short not to enjoy it.

Re:This won't fly.

[hawk]

err, shouldn't that be 67hp?

or is it 640hp . . .

hawk

Re:This won't fly.

[hawk]

It's marketing.

Given that Coors, Miller, and Bud have been selling it a "beer" for so long, it was simply time for a new name . . .

hawk

Re:This won't fly.

[hawk]

You believed the "contacts" bit?

Wow.

*everyone* knows that it was to make the stripper's convention possible . . . :)

hawk

p.s. Of course, conspiracy theorists say that it's because the tsa's hiring division couldn't keep up with the applications for inspectors . . .

p.p.s. Other conspiracy theorists think that this is the real reason that silicone implants can be sold again

Re:This won't fly.

[Uipe]

Just cause you don't need that much power it doesn't mean other ppl also don't... if you just use a pc for streaming and surfing why the hell would you buy a top of the line water cooled pc ?

Re:This won't fly.

[mrchaotica]

I'm well aware of that, which is why I specifically said "air-cooled" and did not say "New Beetle."

In fact, my girlfriend owns a New Beetle TDI, and it is indeed complex and finicky about poor maintenance.

Re:This won't fly.

[Abreu]

Well, you can still find a lot of used air-cooled Beetles here in Mexico, for cheap.

That car was so popular here that the local VW plant was still producing them until 2003 (with only a few changes from the original 1938 model!)

Re:This won't fly.

[d20_techie]

Actually, the whole world's economy is based on who owes who how much. Debt is what drives the entire world's economy. It sucks, but thems the facts jack. Now that our economy has "slowed" we might find it helpful to not continue breaking the Capitalist System.

Re:This won't fly.

[electrictroy]

Bottom Line:

I object to a computer that is going to leak fluid in 3-4 years time and die.

I expect my computers to last longer than that, because I can't afford to just shell out $4000 every few years.

Re:This won't fly.

[kehren77]

Yeah right, Apple build a product that's user-accessible?

Oh my!

[millisa]

"pump ... coupled to the heat pipe is configured to circulate the liquid coolant through the heat pipe."

Why does it seem like that should be followed by 'and shipped to your door in plain, discreet packaging'?

Re:Oh my!

[ILongForDarkness]

You think you have problems getting your laptop through airport security now, wait until the iPipeBomb ships :)

Re:Oh my!

[ettlz]

Doesn't everything get "shipped to your door in plain, discreet packaging" these days? I've never bought a photographic lens and had it arrive in anything other than a plain brown cardboard box wrapped in the courier's shipping bag.

Seriously, is there some company out there that incurs extra costs by shipping its goods in packaging marked "VIBRATOR INSIDE"?

Re:Oh my!

[aliquis]

I guess this is close:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1888

1 cent for no logos, it does include other benefits to though.

Re:Oh my!

[TheQuantumShift]

Along with it's companion book, "Liquid Laptop Cooling, This sort of thing is my bag baby." by one Steve Jobs?

Liquid Nitrogen

[El Lobo]

While liquid cooling may be a better solution than air for laptops, there are studies that show that the energy used to pump the liquid and cool it is greater by a 10x magnitude relative to air systems.

The university of Chalmers in Sweden has been experimenting with liquid Nitrogen for some time now and their solution (while not cheap) is extremely effective for cooling of small electronic devices. Give it some time and I'm sure this will made it into mainstream (and Abble may very possibly claim that they invented the thing as well).

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

[Xiroth]

The university of Chalmers in Sweden has been experimenting with liquid Nitrogen for some time now and their solution (while not cheap) is extremely effective for cooling of small electronic devices. Give it some time and I'm sure this will made it into mainstream (and Abble may very possibly claim that they invented the thing as well).

I doubt it - that sounds like a miniture cryobomb to me. Depressurising liquid nitrogen (i.e. exposed to air) cools very, very fast, so if the device was ruptured it could cause some very nasty cold burns. This might be applicable in some limited circumstances, but the risk of costly litigation is too high for the general consumer market.

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

[David Gerard]

This is generally liquid gel cooling, where the liquid has high thermal conductivity. The pump needn't be all that powerful. There are pumpless systems that use liquid CFCs, but (a) they use CFCs (chemically harmless, but nassssty to dispose of given ozone concerns) (b) the CFCs cost a fortune. The main problem will be the requirement of perfect sealing.

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

[Anonymous Coward]

"Abble may very possibly claim that they invented the thing as well"

WTF is an Abble?

That's even lamer than Micro$oft, you should be ashamed.

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

[BlackSnake112]

Sort of like all those heat pipe CPU/GPU heat sinks. Xigmatek and others make these with a liquid inside that will move inside the heat pipe to transfer the heat away from the heat source.

I sort of thought Apple, and everyone else was already doing that. The cpu heat sink on my 4 year old dell has heat pipes.

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

[D Ninja]

Abble is Apple's ignored younger brother. He never gets the attention he craves and he is constantly looking for ways to undermine is older brother's reputation.

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

[David Gerard]

And the PowerMac G5 was liquid-cooled, anyway. But putting it into a laptop successfully, without hydraulic disasters, will still be quite a notable achievement.

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

[Creepy Crawler]

And our current batteries are lithium based.. High energy storage, flammable metal, and that equals bad situation if they are opened forcefully.

A LNG release isnt that bad.. Just some frozen stuff. Igniting metal that cannot be put out by a traditional 3-type fire extinguisher is in a class by itself.

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

[Hatta]

Remember when the T-1000 crashed into a liquid nitrogen truck and shattered? Imagine that happening to your lap.

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

[Oktober Sunset]

well at least cold burns would make a change from the usual heat burns from all those exploding batteries.

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

Is our lap supposed to represent the T-1000? Or does it stand in for a liquid nitrogen truck?
Either way it seems the results would be less than pleasant...

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

[DrgnDancer]

At least Micro$oft has that "Ah ha, you changed the "S" to a dollar sign in order to indicate the company is greedy, you clever person you" sort of obvious, if trite, statement. I'm not even sure what "Abble" indicates other than: "I often confuse my "b" key with my "p" key."
 

Water?

[martinmarv]

Surely it would be better to use ice? It's much colder.

Re:Water?

[fastest fascist]

Ah yes, liquid ice. Why has no-one thought of that before?

Re:Water?

[Alsee]

I think you mean molten ice.

Jupiter's moon Europa also has a core of molten ice. I it even erupts occasionally from volcanos, as Europan lava.

Thousands of people die each year from molten ice inhalation.
Ask your congressman to ban molten ice!

-

Re:Water?

[jitterman]

I think you mean molten ice.

No no no... Molson(tm) Ice. Should see your Apple do some interesting things once it starts to blow .08 or greater.

Re:Water?

[yabos]

You jest but it's actually possible to have water below zero degrees Celsius but not be frozen. It's called super cooled water.

Re:Water?

[Tubal-Cain]

It's almost as bad as dihydrogen monoxide.

Re:Water?

[Kadagan AU]

Citation.

Bad terminology

[nog_lorp]

They should double check their terminology. Heat pipes are defined to be a closed system whereby the working fluid circulates by convection and capillary action.

"Heat pipes contain no mechanical moving parts..."

Re:Bad terminology

[redxxx]

Well, you could still pump the liquid back to the hot side, and use convection to pull it away. They are just replacing the capillary action with a pump.

So long as they still keep the whole thing under a partial vacuum and moving heat away from the hot side via convection. I'm OK with calling it some form of heat pipe.

It's not like they are using a compressor or anything, they are just helping out the circulation. Heck, plenty of heat pipes use gravity to get the liquid back, but that's not really going to work with a laptop.

Meh, yeah, it is not what I think of when I hear heat pipe. But it uses a lot of the same processes, and the math for heat transfer should work out to be about the same, with maybe a bit more capacity(and the new ability to suffer mechanical failures).

That or it is just non-novel nonsense. A standard phase change system or heat pipes hooked up to('coupled with') a pump powered liquid cooling system.

Re:Bad terminology

[jank1887]

yes, this can involve a heat pipe. Read the claims. (please whack that !heatpipe tag). your laptop has a heatpipe now. it efficiently gets heat from the source (IC) to the removal fluid (air). Now, they want a liquid loop in there, and this could involve a heat pipe. You'd have to do the system balance to see if the extra distance-from-source gained by the heatpipe offsets the cost and thermal impediment it imposes. Maybe it does, maybe not. Maybe the liquid should go right to the chip, maybe it can be better coupled to the heat by spreading it through a heatpipe first.

And anyway, putting in a liquid heat-acquisition loop doesn't remove the need to dump the heat to air eventually. the hope would just be that the more efficient acquisition and the increased freedom in designing your rejection-to-air create a net thermal benefit. Battery life would likely take a hit in any case.

Re:Bad terminology

[redxxx]

Actually having read the patent, it would seem to apply to any and all methods of cooling something portable using 1)a fluid, 2)a pump, and 3)tubes.

damned retarded patent. In some of the cases where they talk about heat pipe they are talking about the real thing, but then they go on to talk about phase change in wholly unrelated methodology. The whole thing is just insanely broad. I freaking hate patents these days.

Re:Bad terminology

[nog_lorp]

"yes, this can involve a heat pipe. Read the claims. (please whack that !heatpipe tag). your laptop has a heatpipe now."

I'm not saying it "can't involve a heat pipe", I'm saying if there is a mechanical pump attached to the pipe, it isn't a heat pipe. The core claim of the patent includes "a pump coupled to the heat pipe, wherein the pump is configured to circulate the liquid coolant in the heat pipe".

Re:Bad terminology

[adisakp]

Heat pipes are still "liquid cooled" even if there are no moving parts. The heat being disappated actually provides the energy to circulate the fluid in a heat pipe.

Also, this looks like a realistic patent since it relies on a large aluminum block as the case for a heatsink which is the exact description of the newest macbooks which are machined from a single block of aluminum.

Re:Bad terminology

[nog_lorp]

True, that isn't what I was contesting. What the Apple patent says is "A heat pipe attached to a pump". Heat pipes are a type of liquid cooling, but what they are describing is not a heat pipe in the first place. It is just normal liquid cooling.

aren't we beyond the limits of air cooling?

[Racemaniac]

my father has got one of those huge 19" laptops with a 3ghz+ pentium 4 processor and geforce 5xxx graphic chipset
unless we put something under it so there is some room between the laptop and the table, it completely overheats as soon as i stress it (a simple game that a pc like that hsould easily handle. Diablo 2 or so) -_-. even with some room under it, it only takes a few minutes for it to get seriously hot (you can actually feel from the outside of the laptop where the hot spots are)

i wonder what ever made them create such stupid laptops (and what made my father buy one -_-)

Re:aren't we beyond the limits of air cooling?

[IBBoard]

i wonder what ever made them create such stupid laptops

That would be "consumers demanding faster and better, even if they don't need it, or buying it if the companies make it".

(and what made my father buy one -_-)

That would be the second part of the above - they made it, so he bought it.

Re:aren't we beyond the limits of air cooling?

[redxxx]

(you can actually feel from the outside of the laptop where the hot spots are)

They are probably going have far fewer issues with hot spots, now that the case is a single carved chunk of aluminum.

Give their marketing people a few years to bring fins back into style, and their cases are going to be massive heat sinks.

Re:aren't we beyond the limits of air cooling?

[conureman]

I've often wondered what sort of marketing nightmare the engineers have been dealing with that ANY laptop has EVER been designed with the case NOT being one massive chunk of finned aluminum.

Re:aren't we beyond the limits of air cooling?

[D Ninja]

i wonder what ever made them create such stupid laptops (and what made my father buy one -_-)

I actually have to admit that I've wondered about this as well.

For my power needs, I have a desktop. Dual Core, lots of RAM, high-end graphics card, etc, etc. That's where I do my "power" stuff (compiling, gaming, etc).

However, for most of my needs, I use my laptop. It's a small (less than 3 pounds, beautiful 12.1 inch screen) Fujitsu laptop that is designed *extremely* well. I use it for surfing the web, reading e-mail, typing up documents, etc. It runs very cool and the battery lasts for freaken ever.

Personally, if I have a laptop, I want it to be a laptop - not a desktop replacement.

Re:aren't we beyond the limits of air cooling?

[PitViper401]

I'll take the laptop off your hands if you're too embarrassed by it. :D

Re:aren't we beyond the limits of air cooling?

[knappe duivel]

don't worry, your father is liquid-cooled

Re:aren't we beyond the limits of air cooling?

[gad_zuki!]

Because people want desktop replacement gaming laptops. Did you really think that running a gpu and cpu at 100% in a tiny package like a laptop isnt going to get super hot? The laws of physics kinda dictate that it'll get hot when used for games. Heck, they dont even call them laptops anymore.

Buyer beware. Read reviews before you buy stuff. There's no shortage of small, cool running laptops.

Battery Usage?

[Meviin]

I would be interested to see the energy difference between a laptop with a fan versus water cooling. I know that the specs haven't been released yet, but it seems like pumping water around would eat up the battery.
I have a HP laptop which runs fairly hot, but that's still better, as far as I'm concerned, than carrying around a heavy pump that uses up the battery.

Of course, if they manage to make it more compact and energy efficient than fans, all the power to them. I would still worry about it leaking and destroying my laptop, though.

Since Apple is trying for a patent for all types of mobile devices on this, it would be particularly interesting to see a water cooled iPhone...

Re:Battery Usage?

[Incadenza]

Since Apple is trying for a patent for all types of mobile devices on this, it would be particularly interesting to see a water cooled iPhone...

Water cooled iPhones? I call prior art!

Re:Battery Usage?

[jamesdfrost]

I don't think that Water cooling will result in a laptop than feels cooler - the heat will still be generated, and will still need to go somewhere! It could result in heat being distributed more evenly, rather than building up in the processor area, or possibly reduce noise, but noise is not generally an issue for most laptops. All in all, it seems like a bit of a waste of time to me.

Re:Battery Usage?

[Sockatume]

Also bear in mind that watercooling or other liquid cooling just allows you to have your radiator remote from the components, granting you better-designed airflow, a single cooler for multiple components, or simply a larger cooler than could be used otherwise (especially if "remote" means "outside the case"). It doesn't magically remove heat on its own. Given that most laptops already use heat-pipes to attain exactly that goal (my own cheapo HP cools most of its components off a single blower on the chassis edge), liquid cooling would only grant an improvement by degrees, not the game-changing design shift people seem to be expecting.

No, I didn't write this whole post for tha pun.

Re:Battery Usage?

[David Gerard]

Efficient heat distribution is well worth it. My HP 6710b has the fan exhaust on the side - when the processor's running full-speed (e.g. when it's running Windows - this hardly ever happens when it's running Linux), the heat blowing out the side is actually hot enough to be painful.

Re:Battery Usage?

[sam0vi]

I have a liquid-cooled laptop, and i can tell you that, for me, the noise reduction is quite important, since i have my laptop running almost 24/7 (torrents)in my bedroom. before that (when i used my desktop pc) i had to turn it off before going to bed (unless i got home really wasted). so i vote YES for the noise reduction, but i guess it's a matter of need.

Re:Battery Usage?

[squoozer]

While it is certianly true that pumping water requires more energy than blowing air you have to move a lot less water so I wouldn't be surprised if they could make the water cooling rig only two or three times more energy intensive than current air cooling.

I know from keeping fish that water pumps use very little power. Even my monster pump that shifts FSM knows how may litres of water an hour only uses about 50W. I also have a tiny pump that is still way larger than you would use for a laptop that draws

Re:Battery Usage?

[bdg4436]

Fans would still be required to effectively exhaust heat from inside the chassis. Liquid cooling simply allows for a more efficient rate of heat exchange from the device(s) to the final heatsink/radiator. From there, the greater density of heat coupled with the same rate of airflow (from fans) will produce a higher dissipation rate to better cool the device on a whole. So the things to consider (in a majority of situations) for power efficiency of such as system would be the power usage of the liquid pump vs any potential decrease in fan voltage to weigh it against all air systems.

Re:Battery Usage?

[steveo777]

I thought that said 6710lb laptop. All I thought was "GEEZ... this is Slashdot. Shouldn't everyone know the metric system?!"

Re:Battery Usage?

[David Gerard]

Pretty close - it's about the size of a starship console ;-)

My goodness I want a netbook for work. An Acer Aspire One with a ton of memory would do nicely kthx.

Re:Battery Usage?

[steveo777]

I was actually going to take a look at their website to check out the notebooks/netbooks... then when I got there I found that had to know everything about their products in order to view them. Letting you look for a product only by model number is rarely a good practice...

My XPS 1330 has 4GB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz Penryn. Very nice aside from the terribly low resolution (Yes, I am complaining that a 13.3" screen has only 1280x800). Oh well, at least there is an HDMI out for my external monitor at home.

Re:Battery Usage?

[David Gerard]

Heh. My 6710 pounds (I'm going to call it that from now on) also does 1280x800. I want a 10" netbook with 1280x800, that'd be nice. Just the thing for watching BBC iPlayer television on!

prior art?

[MoFoQ]

doesn't Hitachi's watercooled laptop from a few years ago count as "prior art"?

Re:prior art?

[Captain Splendid]

Abble

That's as pathetic as the idiots who use "M$".

Re:prior art?

[DanJ_UK]

The machine runs a 1.8GHz mobile Pentium 4, and has a flexible tube which carries water over the chips in order to dissipate heat.

And then (here comes the best bit) the heated water is run into a visible tank on the back of the LCD in order to cool down.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/07/18/hitachi_creates_splash_with_water/ :-/

Re:prior art?

[D Ninja]

Don't mind him. He's just being a rAbble rouser.

ORLY?

[senorpoco]

what's the weight one of these bad boys? plus is coolant non conductive? I should think that the risk of rupture is far higher in a laptop system taking it's hits than a static PC.

A note on semantics

[dtmos]

One doesn't "receive" a patent application; one "makes" one. In the initial application, which is what this is, the claims can say literally anything the applicant wants; during the examination process the applicant can (and usually does) modify the claims to meet the objections of the examiner (who -- in theory, anyway -- is ensuring that anything claimed is supported by text in the original specification portion of the application, and that the resulting invention meets the statutory requirements for utility, novelty, non-obviousness, etc.). A typical tactic on the part of an inventor is to write the initial claims broadly, then narrow their coverage in response to the examiner's objections. Frequently the claims of the final patent bear little resemblance to the initial ones. At the end of the process, one hopes to be left with a description of the invention that still is broad enough to be commercially useful. (One way a patent can be commercially useful, of course, is if it covers a product one is developing for market; in that case, one tries hard to ensure that the claims cover that implementation of the invention.)

With that said, and having read just the initial claims and not the specification -- yet -- I have to agree that there's nothing in the claims that I haven't seen described in public before (setting aside the strange description of a heat pipe coupled to a pump). Since corporations typically do not file patent applications they do not think will result in issued patents -- it's a waste of money and time of people, including the inventor, who have better things to do -- and Apple, for sure, knows the art of PC design, one has to wonder if there is some nugget of novelty, a particular wrinkle or implementation, described in the specification somewhere that is the real reason for the application.

Or maybe they just screwed up. E.g., the PC hardware guys missed the Apple patent committee meeting at which this invention was presented, and the remaining software and UI members of the committee were swayed by a particularly persuasive inventor. (It's been known to happen.)

Re:A note on semantics

[dtmos]

After reading the specification, it sure sounds to me like a description of a prototype product on which Apple is trying to get patent protection. Some of the specifics in the specification are just too, well, specific -- for example, the description in [0034] of the use of a Venturi tube, or the parenthetical comment in [0035] about the use of ultrasonic frequencies in the membrane pump.

Possibly the biggest detail, though -- and the one bit of novelty I think I see in the specification that could form the basis of an allowable patent claim -- is the comment in [0041] that the heat may be coupled to the outside world by a plate behind the display. This is exactly the kind of novelty nugget -- assuming it really is novel -- to which I referred in my earlier comment. One way Apple could get an allowance on this application, after the initial rejection by the examiner, is to include this feature in an independent claim; the invention would then be a liquid-cooled laptop with the heat exchanger behind the display. (Of course, in that case your liquid-cooled laptop that doesn't have the heat exchanger behind the display wouldn't infringe on the resulting patent.)

As I said, assuming that it is a novel feature. PC design is not my specialty. Has anyone seen art before May 22, 2007 -- the filing date of this application -- describing a liquid-cooled laptop with the heat exchanger behind the display?

Re:A note on semantics

[MiKM]

Possibly. The article doesn't mention where the heat exchange takes place, but one of the diagrams seems to suggest that it's behind the display. Maybe somebody who reads Japanese could translate.

Re:A note on semantics

[dave420]

Yup.

Re:A note on semantics

[Kozz]

Sometimes I think that I'd like patents to be granted in the same way a DM grants wishes in an AD&D campaign. Word it carefully, specifically, and don't ask for too much... or you're likely to be the victim of the law of unintended consequences.

Re:A note on semantics

[JackassJedi]

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/hitachis-water-cooled-p4-notebook-20020719/

Re:A note on semantics

[Lumenary7204]

I should have worded it a bit differently: "Apple filed a Patent Application, which was assigned Application No. 20080291629, for a 'liquid-cooled portable computer.'"

So the opening was semantically correct, if read literally, but in hindsight could have used some clarification.

Kudos...

I don't think they necessarily "agree"

[Opportunist]

ORLY patents serve only two purposes: One being that you have to pay through the nose if you want to do what is the obvious next step in development. And today it seems the logical next step in cooling for mobiles is liquid (as it has been for non mobile computers for, I don't know, a few decades?).

The other purpose is to simply leave your competition behind because they must not use what you patented.

So, of course, Apple is the good guy here, because they force the developers of laptops to come up with new, inspired ideas because they blocked the path of the most obvious one?

No, wait, ain't it usually MS blocking paths and Apple coming up with something fancy? I'm confused here...

Re:I don't think they necessarily "agree"

[cwingrav]

So, they should wait for someone else to block the path and be the "good guys". Look, hate the game, not the player. :)

Apple is playing offense with this patent and they have to because, as near everyone can agree, the patents being awarded for the computer industry are inane these days.

Liquid metal means no moving parts

[spectrokid]

It could be they are considering pumps with no moving parts, like the one described here: http://danamics.com/technology/pump.aspx

Re:Liquid metal means no moving parts

[Sockatume]

The summary mentions a pump.

Wrong Direction

[lobiusmoop]

With the rise of netbooks, I think the laptop market is moving more towards smaller and more efficient, rather than big and powerful. I'd much rather see an ultra-portable Apple laptop that needs _no_ cooling assistance and gets 12-18 hours on a basic battery (so I can leave the power brick at home!) than another high-wattage crotch burner in the marketplace.

Re:Wrong Direction

[TheRaven64]

Considering that they bought a company that designs low-power chips, I wouldn't be surprised if you see this. Apple tends to divide its product lines into the consumer and pro models, where the pro models are very low-volume, high-margin and the consumer models are much higher volume (I wouldn't be surprised if something like the MacBook sells more units than any other laptop - Dell or Asus may sell a few times more laptops, but it's divided among a lot of product lines). This is the kind of thing you'd find in one of their pro lines. For their consumer lines expect something more like an iPod touch - 1-2GHz dual-core ARM SoC designed by former PA Semi people, same UI as the Touch, but a slightly larger screen and a keyboard.

Re:Wrong Direction

[wierd_w]

I dunno, I kinda like my Laptop/Easy Bake Oven. I suspect I could market the oven portion to college students and make a killing.

Re:Wrong Direction

[aaarrrgggh]

You could argue that the netbooks are the best users for something like this; the heat dissipation options with air are much more limiting in compact designs than larger machines. I know the venting on my AA1 is ugly when compared to the macs, and the noise level is pretty significant. Something with a very small membrane pump could do wonders.

Only problem is that a pump failure will immediately toast the system, and you have to spend real money to keep the piping connections from leaking.

Re:Wrong Direction

[Lumenary7204]

It's already out there... It's called an "iPhone."

What about weight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably the weight of the liquid is greater than the weight of the fans - by how much I don't know

Too late

[sam0vi]

I already own a liquid-cooled laptop. i bought it last year. it's an LG (can't remember the exact model right now). so unless they do some creative wording in the patent filing, i think they are quite busted. Sorry...

Apple is a corporation.

[argent]

Apple is a corporation. Corporations are by law required to be psychopathic money-hungry bastards (that's what the SEC regulations for public companies amount to). Don't attribute human emotions and motivations to corporations... corporations reflect ANY human attributes only in spite of what they are.

Setting that aside, the third reason for a patent is to provide defensive ammunition against the OTHER psychopathic money-hungry bastards that might use THEIR patent against you.

Re:Apple is a corporation.

[mu22le]

corporations reflect ANY human attributes only trough extensive marketing efforts

there, fixed that for you :)

Re:Apple is a corporation.

[argent]

You say "money-hungry" like it's a bad thing.

It may be of concern when it's combined with "psychopathic" and "bastard".

You should start a company that's not money-hungry and see how far you get...

I didn't say there was an alternative to a public corporation being a PMHB, just that you have to keep that in mind when dealing with one.

Or just a bad understanding of Apple?

[Crash Culligan]

nog_lorp: They should double check their terminology. Heat pipes are defined to be a closed system whereby the working fluid circulates by convection and capillary action.

And that's probably what they're going to do, too.

Remember, Mr. Jobs absolutely hates noisy computers. He wants them to run as quietly as possible. Fans are kept to an absolute minimum, tolerated only when absolutely necessary and verboten otherwise.

Substitute "pump" for "fan," and you can see where this is going. They'll want a system as noiseless as possible, so they'll want as few pumps as possible. A heat pipe (or whatever you choose to call a heat transfer system that uses no motors) would be the answer to their (pipe) dreams.

Didn't end well last time

[countach]

This didn't end well last time with most of the G5 Power Macs ending up leaking their coolant and destroying their insides.

Re:Didn't end well last time

[kehren77]

We just found out yesterday that's what our G5 had been doing. The cost to fix it is greater that a new Mac Pro.

I was disturbed to see this news yesterday.

Wow, so will it also finally ...

[Lars T.]

include Apple's patented chameleon computer case? Or Apple's patented Rotary Mouse?

Ah, but what type of liquid...?

[mingle]

Surely it'll be the environmentally friendly and oh-so trendy Evian...

green?

[jDeepbeep]

How would this fit in with Apple's recent fascination to produce "green" notebooks? What is the environmental impact? Would disposing of them present any issues?

Well

[Shivetya]

it will be hard to determine if the coolant is leaking or the Sony battery, unless the later only occurs with added smoke.

I can see a good use for more power on the pro line but Apple still needs to get a laptop in the $500 to $600 range too introduce more people to X

Re:Well

[jank1887]

no, it's a safety device. the leaking liquid will extinguish the fire caused by the cracked battery. Brilliant!

Re:Well

[mrchaotica]

Hmm... water plus a lithium battery -- I don't think that's going to turn out quite the way you hoped!

The solution I used

[RemoWilliams84]

I got tired of my Alienware laptop being so loud/sucking so much juice when I was playing High School Musical: Day of the Dance that I came up with my own solution. I disabled all of the fans then cut a small hole about the size of a nickel in the side of my laptop. I then inserted a kazoo and krazy glued it in there. Now when my laptop gets hot (or I want a nice kazoo solo in my game) I just blow on it.

Re:The only reason laptops get so hot...

[TheRaven64]

My MacBook Pro doesn't get hot from just running Quartz. The CPU load is around 10% with a dozen applications open and doing small amounts of background processing. The GPU load is at a similar or lower level, and the fans aren't running. The laptop needs cooling only when I do something like run a 3D app that taxes the GPU or when I run a big compile job that taxes both cores of the CPU. You could eliminate the need for cooling by underclocking the CPU, but that's not ideal...

Patenting for patents sake...

[geekmux]

"...the existence of the patent application seems to indicate that laptop manufacturers are in agreement with physicists and engineers who say we are running up against the practical limits of air-cooling such compact pieces of equipment"

Bullshit. The existence of patent application is the 21st Century corporate CYA move. Doesn't mean it's actually worth a damn. C'mon, water-cooled laptops?

I've lost count on how many discussions posted in the last 10 days on Slashdot covering something related to patent application/infringement/reform/lawsuit. It's absolutely obscene what has happened to USPTO, but unfortunately the activity is in direct correlation to the obscenities that find their way into a courtroom every single day that somehow repeatedly escape the M.O.T.O. and Common F. Sense filters.

Motts Apple Juice Boxes

[Trip6]

Just plug the straw into the Juice Port and let the cooling begin!

Greed is human

[StCredZero]

Greed is human. Greed can even be irrational, like humans.

Innovation at its best!

[kimvette]

How is this anything but:

[$PRIOR_ART], but in a laptop.

Making prior art smaller should not warrent a patent. The current patent system is completely ridiculous. You know, Starbucks has a venti Mocha. I ought to patent the trenta mocha. I mean, I'm innovating a new coffee, right? And, just to be a little wacky, it'll be 34 ounces instead of the 30 it is named for. Now that's thinking different!

Re:Innovation at its best!

[Creepy Crawler]

I work at Sbux.

Venti is Italian for twenty. Oz. size of the venti is 20.5 . The prior size was only grande (16 oz.) but people wanted more, so they responded. However, due to Sbux being more health conscious, I cannot see them making a Venti+1 size... A Iced venti white mocha is already 500+ calories. make it breve and it's 700 or so the last I checked.

Note: venti iced cups are 26 oz due to ice, as they plan it still to be averaged as a 20.5 oz hot cup amount of liquid.

Re:The only reason laptops get so hot...

[RMH101]

So what are you saying, your MBP doesn't get hot at idle? I'd hope not.
My 17" 2.4GHz Santa Rosa MBP gets too hot to touch above CPU and GPU (strip on top of keyboard) when I run a 3d game in Bootcamp if I don't manually crank the fans to max before I start and lift the rear of the machine off the desk.

Do anything CPU or GPU intensive (and if you never do this, why did you buy a MBP?) and it gets *hot*. This, combined with the ticking timebomb of poor quality Nvidia GPUs that are goign to fail en masse, isnt' a good thing.

Re:Just in time to be outclassed...

[INeededALogin]

Troll. Fastest XP Laptop is Macbook. Don't be hatin.

Um, ok

[Taibhsear]

This is just heat pipe tech with a pump on it. Even with the pump you will still need a fan anyways (like all desktop watercooling). Air doesn't exactly circulate well in an enclosed laptop without a fan. Regardless of whether you circulate the fluid or not, if there is no air flow (or phase change cooler, or a constant fresh source of cold fluid) to facilitate heat exchange the heatpipe isn't going to do a damn thing after the first few minutes. So you're going to have the usual power usage from the fan, plus the extra energy for a water pump. And since it will most likely be on a laptop with a power munching graphics card and processor, I'd say battery life would be about... 10 minutes? Kind of blows the point of having a laptop doesn't it?

Re:The only reason laptops get so hot...

[TheRaven64]

My point is to reply to the grandparent post that is claiming that laptops get hot because of all of the 'pointless eye candy'. I rebut this by saying that, in spite of all of the eye candy running in OS X by default, this does not tax the CPU or GPU on my (two-year-old) MacBook Pro. The heat is generated when I run a program which is doing something computationally complex, such as rendering 3D scenes or compiling large programs, and has nothing to do with the eye candy in the desktop environment.

Oh, and my MBP has an ATi GPU, so no ticking nVidia timebomb there...

Stupid Patent

[zubikov]

Yes, good. They can be cooled with the Mac owners' snobbery and conceitedness. They can also be backup-cooled with the frappacino as they're aimlessly typing at Starbucks.

IBM/Lenovo

[mistahkurtz]

*cough* thinkpads *cough*

seriously, they've been using liquid cooling for years....

How about something a bit more meaningful?

[cwcpetech]

Given that Lenovo has been forced away from AFFS/IPS, how about using some of that clout to move to something that's a lot better than TN and putting that into a laptop? Not RGBLED, not OLED, but something comparable to what Lenovo had with Flexview? Of course, cooling's fine, but it's not as if you can just find whatever panel will fit of your choosing and put it on there.

Corporation != public corporation

[randomchicagomac]

To be pedantic, those rules only apply to public corporations (of which Apple is one). If you are a corporation that sells stock, then (in general) you have a legal duty to maximize return on investment for your shareholders. But if you are a private corporation (say you incorporated the family business just because you wanted a liability shield), the corporation is all yours, and you can do whatever you want with it, including being a "psychopathic money-hungry bastard" or not.

Re:Corporation != public corporation

[argent]

Good point, thanks for the clarification. I should have noted that myself.

Re:Corporation != public corporation

[argent]

Point. Thank you for the correction, I should have noted that. :)

Re:noise?

[conureman]

I think that noise is the root cause of this issue. Apple merely plans to get an edge on the competition for a solution. I've kept at least two or three (desktop) computers running non-stop for about ten years. Nobody bothers crying to me anymore about the wind-tunnel sound effects, but I'm planning to surprise all with passive cooling on the next upgrade cycle. Just my personal observation, but I attribute all my component non-failure to the favorable thermal environment. The ONLY hardware failure I have ever experienced have been the 100% rate of the FDDs. (At very low usage, but they get crudded w/dust from the intense air exchange. I've been meaning to deal w/this issue, usually if I HAVE to read a floppy, I just buy another drive.) With a liquid exchange medium they could move the energy up to a heatsink behind the display and relieve the lap area.

How do you know it is obvious?

[strangeattraction]

The patent doesn't prevent people form using liquid cooling. The patent probably claims to implement it in a unique way. Maybe they built it into the one piece aluminum body or something clever that takes up less room or makes it more efficient. Not all patents are necessarily bad patents.

Imagine ANY laptop rupturing in your lap.

[Neurotic Nomad]

If something is happening in my computer that causes it to physically come apart as it sits on my lap, a tablespoon of liquid nitrogen will be the LEAST of my worries.

Apple LiquaCool: Beta tested in the field.

[Neurotic Nomad]

The liquid-cooled G5 is a relative rarity. How long was it on the market, anyway? It seems that it was available in that sweet spot between "too many to replace as they fail" and "enough real-world failure data to put us years ahead of anyone else". Was Apple using their customers as a beta test group for liquid cooling?

Re:Apple LiquaCool: Beta tested in the field.

[David Gerard]

The Iron Law of Mac Sales: graphic designers will pay whatever it takes to get the very fastest official Apple Macintosh available, no matter how stupid an idea it is in implementation detail. This has held since the IIfx was released specifically to hook this market.

Patents are for IMPLEMENTATIONS of ideas.

[Neurotic Nomad]

Patents are for IMPLEMENTATIONS of ideas, not for ideas themselves.

How Apple's liquid-cool system is unique from other liquid-cool systems is the basis of the patent.

They are not claiming to have invented the idea of using liquid to cool a laptop nor are they somehow claiming "dibs" on liquid cooling.

By filing this patent application, they are attempting to prevent other hardware builders from tearing down a liquid-cooled MacBook Pro, slapping themselves in the forehead, changing their design to mimic Apple's way of doing it, then claiming the design is "obvious" while never explaining why they themselves didn't do it that way in the first place.

Water Damage = Good?

[WillyDavidK]

I can't help but wonder if this does make it to market, will Apple be forced to extend their warranty to cover liquid damage? As it is now, if they see even a tiny spec of corrosion ANYWHERE in your computer after opening it up, they will immediately close it and send it back to you without repair. The reasoning for this of course is that if the laptop was damaged by water or liquids, then it couldn't possibly be Apple's fault, and would therefore fall under 'abuse'. In other words, apple can't be held liable for your idiocy.

So what happens when Apple starts shipping laptops with liquids circulating around inside? That means that if the laptop suffered liquid damage it could potentially be Apple's fault, and therefore wouldn't it be covered under warranty? Just a thought.

Enthusiasts?

[MacBoy]

Enthusiasts have been using liquid cooling for years? Apple has also been using Liquid cooling for years! The two dual PowerPC G5's threw so much heat that they had no choice really. And it's not the first actively cooled system Apple has made. Fourteen years ago the PowerMac 8100/110 had a 110 MHz PowerPC 601 with a Peltier-Junction (thermoelectric) cooler.

Re:Just in time to be outclassed...

[donkeyqong]

Still?