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Intel Develops Micro-Refrigerator To Cool Chips
Spacedonkey writes "Researchers at Intel, RTI International of North Carolina, and Arizona State University have made ultra-thin 'micro-refrigerators' for computer chips. The device uses a thermoelectric cooler made from nanostructured thin-film superlattice that can reduce the temperature by 55C when a current passes through it. In testing, it reduced the temperature on part of a chip by 15C without impairing its performance. The researchers say the component could be particularly useful for cooling hot spots that frequently occur on multi-core chips."
They are putting this between hot spots of the chip and the heat spreader that normally covers the chip and gives a surface for heatsinks to sit on. So the heat is still being extracted by the heat sink, this thing just helps keep the hottest spots cooler
Don't think of it as a peltier cooler... think of it as a way of instantly transporting the heat away from a particular portion of an IC. It is integrated into the IC itself, so it's not a cooler, but a heat transmitter.
So, for example, if I want to "over clock" a portion of my IC, but it keeps running to hot, I could use this to extract heat from the area and distribute it where it doesn't matter so much.
Essentially... the Watts of heat you pull from your CPU, aren't generated across the entire chip, but are commonly more localized. For example, cache doesn't generate much heat. If I can take heat from the FPU and move it to the cache area, I can clock the FPU higher, and have fewer heat-related failures.
So in summery... it's not a cooler!
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Usually when a chip is running, only certain parts receive heavy use. These parts of the chip are going to be dumping more heat than the parts of the chip that are lying idle. In result, the chips has a few hotspots that are cooking your most important circuitry.
These mini-refrigerators will remove these hot spots by dispersing heat to areas that are currently underutilized. This should give the chip a more even operating temp and thus provide a greater surface area with which to disperse heat in general. The end result is that chips become more reliable and can be run at higher wattages without melting a hole through your chip. Higher wattages means that they can be clocked higher without error and thus get more work done in less time.
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The purpose is to move the heat within the chip. You're thinking of thermal transfer from the surface of the chip to the environment. What Intel is concerned about is thermal transfer from the component inside the chip that is generating heat to the outside surface.
Currently, chips are limited (in part) by heat production within the chip -- the heat gets to the chip surface by simple conduction. It's the components inside, generating the heat, that are going to fail at high temperatures, though.
Fortunately removal of heat at the chip's surface is not a big issue. As you note, a thermoelectric cooler could push the heat to a set of hot fins and a fan. Water coolers have plenty of capacity as well.
When you move heat, you're concentrating the heat and making the hot side hotter. Heat sinks are rated in Watts/degree so a heat sink that is 10 degrees above ambient will dump heat 5 times as fast as a heat sink at 2 degrees above ambient. Thus, a Peltier device pumping heat into a heatsink will cause the heatsink to run hotter and work more effectively.
Engineering is the art of compromise.