HP Marries Inkjet and Robotic Technology to Cool Chips

An anonymous reader writes "Extremetech has an article about how H P has decided to use the spraying tech developed for inkjet printers to cool chips -- and has made a robot that'll wander around data centers, detecting too-hot chips and hosing them down." The article notes that the robot needed about 1 hour of training on the room before it would go about the business of chip cooling. The real advance would be if it achieved sentience and went crazy and became a graffiti taggin' super robot, but I digress.

the robot will be very affordable.

[SpanishInquisition]

But the memory chips for it will be insanly outpriced.

Buzzwordmania

[SkipToMyLou]

"Thermosyphons funnel fluid from the outside condenser to the evaporator on top of the microprocessor. But HP discarded thermosyphons, and heat pipes, because of "pulse boiling", a rapid cycle of heating and cooling that can damage the microprocessor, according to an internal study conducted in May of 2000. HP developed its evaporative cooling to eliminate pulse boiling, Patel said."

Since when does ExtremeTech use a story generator?

A lethal robot sent back from the future to...

[DataPath]

spray down really hot people? That sounds scary. Yeah. Besides... the slashdot audience has nothing to worry about... he'll be starting with marathons - places where obviously you wouldn't find your typical slashdot reader.

Consumables...

[armyofone]

Robot - $1,500.00
Coolant Cartridges - $300.00 each

Actually...

[Bruce Perens]

Actually, the robot searches for DMCA-covered data in data centers and sprays the chips with sulphuric acid.

Only kidding.

Bruce

Warchalking

[krugdm]

The real advance would be if it achieved sentience and went crazy and became a graffiti taggin' super robot

How about letting it wander around town looking for wireless hookups, and then marking where they are, warchalking style.

Of course, I just had a vision of this thing dressed up like a dog, going around and "marking" it's territory...

Patel also stated..

[Frank of Earth]

.. that the robot plays the Nelly song "It's gettin hot in here, go on and take off all your clothes" as he's going around cooling down processors.

Kryton

[T-Kir]

This reminds me of the Red Dwarf series, but more precisely the books. Where Kryton the maintainence mechanoid was responsible for crashing the ship he was on because he ran out of things to clean, so he decided to give the (dusty and dirty) live computer circuit boards a good going over with soapy water and a sponge.

Let's hope they don't have any disasters.

Re:Consumables...

[krugdm]

Of course, the ones you buy it with will be "economy" coolant cartridges and only half full, so you'll have to buy a new one almost right away...

I guess I'll wait for HP

[bsharitt]

I tried this myself just a few minutes ago. Since I don't have a robot or injet spraying thing, I just used a water hose and set it on mist. I dont think it worked to well. Sure my computers nice and cool, but it won't boot. How could this be caused by the cooling system?

The obvious extension with Sony's tech

[yeoua]

Well the obvious use for this now is to put this tech into Sony's Aibo.

Now you got a smart dog wandering around sniffing for heat, and pissing... er I mean spraying on it to put it out.

Wait...

[wo1verin3]

.... if I can eventually use this to cool my systems... how do I heat my house?

HP Marries Inkjet and Robotic Technology to...

[jsonmez]

Stop intruders... HP has trained a robot to run around spraying people in the eyes with inkjet cartidges, who are not wearing their access badges.

cooling robot robots?

[SCHecklerX]

So...are there cooling robots that chase the cooling robots to cool them down when they get too hot? And if so...are there more cooling robots to cool them down? Could be interesting :)

A question.

[teamhasnoi]

if you filled the robot with hot grits, would it automagically find Natalie Portman and spray her down with them?

Third-party Cartridges

[bgeer]

I just heard a report of a strange bug in the new robot: for some reason if it detects a non-HP ink cartridge in the printer, it pulls it out and stomps on it. A patch for this problem is expected in Q3 2009.

Re:Actually...

[Jucius Maximus]

There is a hidden command in these things to seek out and spray down people secretly doing pr0n in the datacenters.

Re:Actually...

[Neon Spiral Injector]

People doing porn in a datacenter? Does that happen often?

I don't even want to know what they'd be sprayed with.

Re:HP Marries Inkjet and Robotic Technology to...

[Digital Prophet]

Stop intruders... HP has trained a robot to run around spraying people in the eyes with inkjet cartidges, who are not wearing their access badges.

It will then bill the intruder $100 for a replacement cartridge, $20 for the high quality photo paper used to print the bill, and $500 for the labor costs involved.