New Chip-cooling Technology

BillOfThePecosKind writes "Researchers have demonstrated a new technology using tiny "ionic wind engines" that might dramatically improve computer chip cooling, possibly addressing a looming threat to future advances in computers and electronics. Purdue researchers funded by Intel have improved the "heat-transfer coefficient" by some 250%. I never liked water cooled systems, and this sounds promising. However I wonder how much ozone one of these things produces."

Ozone production FTW

[SamP2 (1097897)]

"I wonder how much ozone one of these things produces."

Produces? Hey, let's make a ton of these and solve the ozone hole problem forever!

Re:

[SoapBox17 (1020345)]

Welcome to 2004. The o-zone problem is solved. It fixes itself over time, as long as nothing is continually damaging it. Since CFCs were banned a long time ago, the o-zone hole has begun to shrink. It'll be gone in about 50 years.

Re:Ozone production FTW

[eggnoglatte (1047660)]

What the heck is "o-zone"? Ozone [wikipedia.org] is a molecule, not some kind of atmospheric zone; that would be the ozone layer, i.e. the atmospheric layer with a high natural concentration of ... wait for it ... ozone.

Re:

[bigdavesmith (928732)]

Slashdot is not the proper place for a comprehensive discussion of the o-zone.

Those of you over 18 might want to check out this clip [youtube.com] though, if you're not sure exactly what the o-zone is.

Re:

[Nefarious Wheel (628136)]

I think we'd need a giant space truck, not a series of tubes. Space ain't the place to go waving internets around.

CFCs and HCFCs

[Enderandrew (866215)]

HCFCs still burn a hole into the ozone layer, and the full damage from released CFCs and HCFCs can take up to 50 years as it is a chain reaction. I worked on air conditioners in the military and had to become EPA certified on the stuff. I got the "Universal" license from the EPA. The biggest offender in this area is still the US government. While most civilian vehicles have newer HCFC-based air conditioners, the military does not. And not everyone has banned CFCs fully yet.

From the Wikipedia:

"By the ye

Re:CFCs and HCFCs

[evilviper (135110)]

And don't go spouting nonsense about how they work just as good. B.S. Got in an older Toyota the other day that still had the old refrigerant in it, and the air it throws out of this little 4 banger is WAY colder than any new car I've been in, and that is several makes and models.

That's completely idiotic.

The fact that a certain car has a more powerful A/C is because it was designed to be more powerful, NOT because of the refrigerant. No doubt your old Toyota's A/C demands far more power to operate than any of the newer ones you've compared it with.

There is a difference between refrigerants, but it's a very small one, and couldn't REMOTELY account for your magical little story there. In fact, air conditioners have been getting more and more energy efficient over the years, at the same time that refrigerants have been getting less toxic.

Re:

[Gr8Apes (679165)]

For a given system, R134a refrigerant is less effective than R12, or other replacements. George Goble [yarchive.net] is the guy that lobbied for and lost the bid to replace R12 with a relatively inexpensive superior performing propane/iso-butane mixture. R134 performs worse, requires larger condensors, and has less heat carrying capacity. Additionally, should the condenser hit 214+F it won't work at all. The summer temps here regularly hit over 100, and in full sun on black asphalt you'll get a nice cozy 140+. Add in engi

Re:

[mikael (484)]

Seriously, how do we know that the hole was caused by cfc's, I would think if it was and the cfc's somehow defied gravity and got up to the ozone layer there would be multiple holes?

Because at the North and South poles, the atmosphere does not circulate very well with regards to the rest of the planet. You end up with a large Polar vortex [wikipedia.org] of cold air remaining stationary over the area, which allows the CFC to react with other chemicals in the air:

The chemistry of the Antarctic polar vortex has create

Re:

[scruff323 (840369)]

Actually ozone is a problem in the lower atmosphere. Ozone is very harmful to breathe and can be a problem on hot days in cities. You are talking about the ozone holes in the upper atmosphere, which is a different problem. If these things were to produce ozone (which i doubt), they would actually be harmful and not helpful as the ozone would not patch the ozone hole.

Re:

[DaveWick79 (939388)]

Considering that the trend is toward making chips with smaller transistors that operate at less voltage and thus at lower temperatures, I don't think that having a few of these ozone-emitting devices around will create a pollution problem. In fact, ozone has quite a beneficial property in correct quantities, including cancer therapy, mold or smoke eradication, even water treatment (most high end swimming pools use ozone rather than very harmful chemicals such as chlorine).

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[Rakishi (759894)]

In fact, ozone has quite a beneficial property in correct quantities, including cancer therapy, mold or smoke eradication, even water treatment (most high end swimming pools use ozone rather than very harmful chemicals such as chlorine).

...All except one of those involve killing living organisms. Rat poison is also damn useful but I wouldn't want it in the air or eating it.

Re:

[BobNET (119675)]

Rat poison is also damn useful but I wouldn't want it in the air or eating it.

You would if you had a reason to prevent your blood from clotting (a stroke, for example). Coumadin is just a drug company's brand-name for warfarin, a chemical used in some rat poisons (although I wouldn't want to take the stuff intended for the rats either)...

Re:

[compro01 (777531)]

or eating it.

several people do eat it on the advise of their doctor. (warfarin [wikipedia.org]). at the proper dosage, it is quite useful for preventing blood clots.

Re:

[DaveWick79 (939388)]

And you're just promoting the mostly incorrect nonsense you've heard. Yes, ozone in high quantities can be harmful. Do you even know what ozone is? It's 0^3, which is a highly unstable form of oxygen which quickly breaks down into stable 0^2 and 0^1. The 0^1 has properties which cause it to seek to bond to harmful molecules. This is what makes it useful for water treatment, air treatment, and blood treatment. Unless it is in such high quantities that it starts bonding to good molecules, it is not harm

Re:

[E++99 (880734)]

Ground-level ozone is a pollutant and therefore bad.

I think you mean it's bad and therefore a pollutant.

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[Tatisimo (1061320)]

If we dig down some, the ground level ozone we're making will be above us, therefore, making a new, lower ozone layer. Time to move underground, my fellow human beings!

Re:Ozone production FTW

[FST777 (913657)]

everyone start digging

You must be new here...

Re:

[Jotaigna (749859)]

that would be like getting a woolen jumper big enough and a comb long enough to power your computer with static electricity.

Great!

[quicks0rt (983047)]

"However I wonder how much ozone one of these things produces."

Great! We solved the global warming. Let's get cranking.

Re:

[Brad1138 (590148)]

Currently parent is "(Score:0, Redundant)".

That really isn't fair. If you look at the time stamp it is 1 minute behind the previous (first) post. He probably clicked reply before there were any posts and the previous post was submitted very shortly before his. If 2 or more posts are submitted more or less at the same time, the 2nd shouldn't be penalized for being a few seconds behind. If the posted time showed a 5+ minute difference then "redundant" would be justified.

If I don't, someone else will....

[ZeroFactorial (1025676)]

Cool!

ozone

[TheSHAD0W (258774)]

FWIS The "ionic wind" takes place inside a sealed chamber, no ozone would be leaking out.

Re:

[ricebowl (999467)]

FWIS The "ionic wind" takes place inside a sealed chamber, no ozone would be leaking out.

I'm possibly being naive, and I've yet to read the featured article, but if the ionic wind is inside a sealed chamber how does it aid cooling? Surely the sealed chamber would simply grow warmer over time and become a thermal insulator?

If I'm being dumb please don't hesitate to retort or point out the flaws in my thinking...

Re:ozone

[radl33t (900691)]

You are quite right. The AC has no idea what he is talking about. If only his grasp of "simple heat transfer" matched his arrogance. This is not a sealed chamber. The ions impart momentum to a near wall flow and destroy the boundary layer. Good mixing at the wall = good heat transfer! (The article says as much) These Purdue dudes have a lot of neat electronics cooling stuff going on. I had the pleasure of getting the whole delivery at a seminar last Fall.

Re:

[Tyger (126248)]

Where do you see that? The article describes how it works with fans to reduce the effect where the air closest to the chip moves the least. The ionic wind is the "last mile" of cooling, in that description. If you enclose it in something and point a fan at that, you still have the issue that the fan air doesn't move much close to the now enclosed cooling device. Not only that, it would probably make cooling worse by acting as an insulator.

Sharper Image CPU cooler?

[Hoi Polloi (522990)]

Not unless you cool your CPU with an Ionic Breeze [sharperimage.com]!

Re:

[Enderandrew (866215)]

I saw a homemade hack someone did to do this very thing with an "ionic breeze" from Sharper Image to cool a case. It was a near silent cooling system, which makes me wonder how different that hack was from what the Purdue students discovered.

Ozone at ground level does not help anyway

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

The ozone is needed at high altitude to provide a shield. At low altitudes ozone is bad stuff to have around and is highly damaging.

Didn't we already do this one?

[John Sokol (109591)]

From Sep 17, 2006
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/ 17/2134250 [slashdot.org]

Ionic Cooling For Your Computer
master0ne writes, "We (the folks over at InventGeek) have produced the first ionic cooling system for your high-end gaming system. This system produces absolutely no noise and in fact has no moving parts at all. While this is a proof of concept, it demonstrates that you can get the CFM you need to cool a system efficiently with no moving parts and no increase in power consumption."

And another post
From Jan 3, 2007
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/ 03/1951256 [slashdot.org]

Ionic Winds Chilling Your Computer
Iddo Genuth writes to mention The Future of Things online magazine is reporting that Kronos Advanced Technologies in cooperation with Intel and the University of Washington claims to have developed a new type of ultra-thin, silent cooling technology for processors. The piece covers many of the cooling technologies currently available, how their new corona discharge cooler works, and a short interview with several of the key team members.

And my reply on that one.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=21484 8&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=174537 66 [slashdot.org]

One was using the Ionic Breeze technique to provide just a slight air flow, but it increases the efficiency of the heat sink but a large amount. Problem that they fail to mention is the heatsink really attracts dust, just like the ionic breaze, so you need to get in there with a brush quite often.

Below is a link to many of the prototypes I built. I don't have a photo of the ionic version, but it was just the desktop unit with the large aluminum heatsinks with a plastic duct/ shield was added and a set of fine wires was run across the bottom of the large aluminum heat sinks with -6000V DC on it.
The aluminum heat sinks were grounded.

Here is another reply from Jonathan Walther

Give John Sokol the credit (Score:3, Informative)
by Jonathan Walther (676089) Alter Relationship on Wednesday January 03, @09:00PM (#17452802)
Back in 2002 when John Sokol was designing the first, and still the most efficient silent computer, we discussed the ionic air cooling. I think it was Bill Drury who first mentioned it. We put it off as a possible future direction to go. It didn't seem like it would be nearly as productive a direction as the thermal ground technology John developed. Time has proven John right; his thermal plane and thermal ground patents will revolutionize the computer industry fairly soon now. As a director of Nisvara, I can't reveal more than that at this time. But if you want a silent computer with no moving parts and even lower power consumption than these "coronal discharge" guys are claiming, get in touch with John Sokol.

Re:Didn't we already do this one?

[Tyger (126248)]

And if you RTFA, you'd see that this has as much in common with those past articles as a desktop fan pointed at a CPU has with a heatsink with a fan attached.

Re:

[John Sokol (109591)]

I did RTFA. It's just a matter of semantics.

They are talking about a CPU with a heatsink and ionic wind cooling.

This is more or less the same as a heatsink with an Ionic Breeze pointed at it.
OR am I missing something?

As far as I can see, there vague article is more or less the same as those other articles and what I had already developed and tested in 2003 or so.

 

Re:Didn't we already do this one?

[aproposofwhat (1019098)]

From my reading of the article, I'd say there's a fundamental difference - the ionic wind in this case is produced at the CPU surface, eliminating the trapped layer of air that is produced by normal (laminar) flow from a fan.

Pointing an Ionic Breeze at a heatsink will merely produce the same type of airflow as a fan, only quieter.

Forcing the trapped layer of air at the CPU surface to move should improve the efficiency of the cooling, though a 2 1/2 times improvement seems pretty high - obviously the boundary layer is a significant insulator in this case.

Re:

[brunascle (994197)]

also, this one [slashdot.org], which points to an article i also submitted a day before.

Re:

[John Sokol (109591)]

"Innovative Ion Trap on a Semiconductor"

Nope, that link was something different. These using Ion's for quantum computing,

the parent article here and those other ones, were just using the air currents generated by a high voltage electric fields in air.
It's actually very crude technology.

New Technology?

[nurb432 (527695)]

Hmm then what is this 'Ionic breeze' thing sitting beside me that is blowing air around my room with no fans or other moving parts? Or the industrial electrostatic cleaners that have been around for decades longer?

New application of really old technology would be a bit more accurate.

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[pla (258480)]

Hmm then what is this 'Ionic breeze' thing sitting beside me that is blowing air around my room with no fans or other moving parts?

Well, according to Consumer reports, according to every independant laboratory test, according to even Sharper Image itself...

I'd have to answer "A waste of money and electricy".

Yes, it (slowly) moves air. It just doesn't clean it effectively.

Ironic wind?

[Omnifarious (11933)]

Does this mean now that our computers may have yet another thing that can go wrong? They might break wind.

like this bit

[snarkh (118018)]

The new cooling technology could be introduced in computers within three years if researchers are able to miniaturize it and make the system rugged enough, Garimella said.

Which pretty much applies to any other technology.

Power

[umberto unity (1142849)]

The problem is the power consumption on this thing. If you assume that they want to move all the air in a small region around the wire even once per second, say 10mm x 1mm x 1cm, to use the dimension quoted in TFA and nominal orders of magnitude for chip size and wire thickness, that corresponds to something ~ 10^-5 moles of air. Since Nitrogen has an ionization energy of 1402.3 kJ/mol (Wikipedia), that means if you want to move that quantity of air every second, you need at least something around 15W. That's even assuming you perfectly convert electrical energy into removing electrons from air molecules, and it's just to ionize the air, neglecting the extra energy it then takes to get the ions moving (we'll pretend the fan does all that, even though that would mean that our device isn't doing jack).

I don't know how much energy my laptop uses, but my power adapter is 65W, so 15 seems non-negligible.

Re:

[Ungrounded Lightning (62228)]

Your analysis assumes only the ions are moved, so the entire atmosphere being moved must be ionized.

In fact a single ion carries an enormous number of unionized molecules with it.

ESD issue?

[Ungrounded Lightning (62228)]

This technology looks like it might deposit a large electric charge on the surface of the chip. This will have to be dissipated, before it dissipates itself by creating an electrostatic discharge on (or capacitively coupled to) one of the chips interconnects.

To avoid this the insulating passivation layer will probably have to be topped by an additional conductive layer. This layer, in turn, will increase the capacitive load on the interconnects and likely require additional chip power to switch them.

I expect it will still be a big net improvement. But deploying it won't be trivial.

Re:

[ChrisMaple (607946)]

Many chips have whole planes dedicated almost entirely to power supply or ground. No new layer required, so no additional capacitance.

Fact catches fiction

[SEWilco (27983)]

Science fiction movies have been showing us for years that future computers spew fountains of sparks at the slightest disturbance. And soon they will.

Keeping the chip cool is not the problem

[AmiMoJo (196126)]

Try running a Core 2 Quad and 8800 Ultra together - your PC will become a space heater. Nice in the winter perhaps but not good for hot summers without air conditioning. All this will do is keep the CPU a bit cooler, but the same amount of heat will be generated.

A poor answer to a non-problem.

[Ancient_Hacker (751168)]

Let's think a little first:

• Is there a problem here at all? Heatsinks cost about 50 cents wholesale. Processor heat production is going down. I do't think there's much of a problem here to be solved at all.
• Is this a good solution for the non-problem? There are lots of cheap and tried-and-true alternatives, such as heat pipes, conduction cooling to the case, and just bigger heatsinks.
• How well are microscopic pinpoints going to work with your typical dusty air? How much energy does it take to move all that air? A wild-butt-guess suggests not good numbers at all.

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[ColdWetDog (752185)]

Bah, that picture is so photoshoppped. Can't believe anything you see these days.

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[mrraven (129238)]

I for one welcome our google overmind metaverse overlords.

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[click2005 (921437)]

Or chips will go the other way.. so small you end up putting them in everything. Clothing made of millions of nano-cpus that get power through body movement. Or keep it suspended in a liquid. Drink a glass of Intel PentiYummy (it uses fat cells for energy so it aids dieting) and get a few days of super cpu power.

Re:Only delaying the inevitable

[Enderandrew (866215)]

Actually most people are buying these powerful, speedy processors that underclock themselves to cut down on power and heat. Both AMD and Intel have been very mindful of power and heat consumption lately. Literally processors have more power than what we're throwing at them. Clock-speed has not been racing upwards significantly the past few years, but power consumption has been going down and efficiency going up.