Slashdot Mirror
On-Chip Liquid Cooling Permits Smaller Devices With No Heatsinks Or Fans
An anonymous reader writes: DARPA-funded research into on-chip liquid cooling has resulted in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) liquid-cooled device that can operate at 24 degrees Celsius, versus 60 degrees Celsius for an equivalent air-cooled device. The cooling fluid resides only nanometers from the heat it must address, and operates so efficiently as to offer potential to stack CPUs and GPUs using copper columns, as well as dispensing with heat-sinks and fan systems. With those components removed, the system can facilitate far more compact designs than are currently feasible.
...there still is a form of exterior cooling, it's just now the interface between the case's liquid cooling system interfaces with the IC packaging rather than with an exterior heatsink module that's in contact with the packaging.
This is not a cooling system integrated into the chip directly without an exterior component.
I see good and bad. Good, packaging becomes smaller so the processor can fit into smaller cases, and now there's no need for all of the mounting bosses for the traditional heatsink. Bad, the interface between the cooling system and the chip will undoubtedly be more fragile than between a cooling system and a large (relatively speaking) metal heatsink, and if there's a problem in the cooling passages on the chip there is no inexpensive method to replace the cooling portion if it's clogged-up.
We'll have to see how well this operates in the wild. If a lot of cooling system pressure loss and leaking occurs where the tubing interfaces with the chip then this won't be so good. If it manages to not leak and not plug-up then this could be a nice evolutionary step.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Liquid cooling, no matter how efficient, still requires you to dump the waste heat somewhere. You don't magically get to just seal up the vents in the case because "liquid!".
That said, yes, this counts as a very cool (no pun intended) step forward, and will vastly improve the number of transistors we can pack into an arbitrary sized box - But make no mistake, that "savings" comes at the cost of needing an external radiator.
TANSTAAFL.