Next Generation CPU Refrigerators

Iddo Genuth writes "Researchers at Purdue University are developing a miniature refrigeration system, small enough to fit inside laptop computers. According to the researchers, the implementation of miniature refrigeration systems in computers can dramatically increase the amount of heat removed from the microchips, therefore boosting performance while simultaneously shrinking the size of computers."

Side Question???

[TheCastro]

Whenever I hear about new cooling solutions I remember a few years back someone had developed that liquid (or gel) that you could submerge computers and tvs into, but it wouldn't fry them. Everyone was talking about using this nonbonding liquid to cool computers and use to put out fires in places with paintings since it didn't ruin the paint. Does anyone know or remember what I'm talking about, or do I just sound like a crazy man,HAHAHAHAHAH! P.S. Bill Gates probably bought it to throw away.

Re:How much juice?

[megaditto]

Could be pretty damn efficient if it's a heat pump.

A good AC unit usually consumes less than 10 times the energy it moves (a 1 kW window unit rated for 40,000 BTUs for example), but that depends how much colder the inside needs to be compared to the outside air.

In case of CPU coolers (cooling things hotter than ambient air), one could even GENERATE electricity if the size and cost of the "cooler" is not a concern (A thick diamond heatpipe to conduct heat away to distant thermocouples is how I would do it).

An alternative...

[jd]

...is to position the computer upside-down. Condensation does not form on the hot surfaces, only the cold surfaces. If the cold surfaces cause the water to drip away, there is no way for the water to interfere. Another option is to refrigerate the entire computer (which is done by overclockers), as the coldest point will then be far away, and you've the added bonus that the air will be very dry within a short timeframe.

A third option would be to run copper from each chip surface to the refrigerator. The heat gradient will prevent any chip running hot, you only need one refrigerator, and you can handle the case of the heavy workloads shifting from one part of the system to another.

Re:Condensation?

[Enderandrew]

Not to mention the reason you get condensation in a fridge is often that a single compressor operates both the fridge and freezer. Systems with different compressors for the two systems are more segregated, and have less condensation problems. Each system stays at a controlled humidity level.

bad idea

[ILuvRamen]

First of all I've been saying for years, just screw the motherboard into the back of your mini-fridge and keep installing from there. You just open the door to put in a CD lol. But also, not all components can handle active cooling. My old laptop got really hot playing games. So I used ice packs under it to cool it. It got the temp way down but the hard drive died after about a month from the extreme hot-cold difference. I assume some external parts contracted while internal ones remained hot and expanded and some parts rubbed against other parts and it got damaged. I was able to get the data off after like 10 blue screens. So the moral of the story is, active cooling that can cool it lower than the surrounding air temperature is REALLY, REALLY BAD for some internal parts.

Re:Revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't kept up on Core architecture chips then. The cheap ones will make it up to >3 ghz from sub 2ghz, and the high end ones can hit 4ghz+.

So transistor speed/pathing issues are, at least for the current generation, a non-issue.

Re:Excellent

[somersault]

I don't think multi-core is going to cut it, it seems to me each processor needs it's own mememory and bandwidth to do massive calculations, and then sends the results of this information to where it is needed.

While multi-core isn't amazingly effective for doing 'massive calculations' of the variety that scientists usually do (compared to a supercomputer with thousands of nodes anyway), it is great for general purpose computing. It definitely helps for everyday use - whenever I use a single core computer (even with a high clockspeed), I notice the difference in responsiveness, especially when booting into Windows and all the system tray apps are loading, or running lots of applications at the same time. You have to remember that even if you're just running a single application on your dekstop, there are plenty of background processes too.

Not that I want to dissuade you from researching into more efficient processor methodologies, even if it's only for specific tasks - go ahead :) But when you get down to it, most tasks your average computer user does during the day are neither suitable for parallelisation, nor are they considered highly specialised. I'm just thinking of web browsing, chatting, checking email. Modern games do involve lots of operations that 20 years ago would be considered 'specialised', like 3D sound, graphics and physics processing, but we already have specialised processors for all of these things.

I'm really wondering if anyone has done any research into the geometry of information processing functions, of what can be specifically offloaded and what should not

I don't think you're giving the guys at places like Intel and AMD much credit.. if they hadn't thought about stuff like that then where did the idea for 'hyperthreading' and different CPU 'pipelines' come from? To me it seems that the only things that have changed in the last couple of decades is that we've gone from having computers that were mainly designed for integer arithmetic as far as hardware was concerned, to having computers with addons for floating point calculation, and now we have units capable of massively parallel floating point calculations and amazing amounts of memory bandwidth (graphics cards and supercomputers), and now we are getting APIs like CUDA to make use of graphics cards to do more supercomputer like things with our graphics cards. I'm not a CPU design engineer though, so the true progression is probably a bit more complex ;)

Re:Excellent

[b4upoo]

Condensation is a wonderful by product of refrigeration. The love of PC electronics for oozing water is well known. Perhaps refrigeration is not the best idea inside a PC case.

Re:Why must they be symetric?

[somersault]

You mean like motherboard chipsets? These days the chipset is gradually being moved into the CPU die anyway, and even graphics are being integrated with the CPU die, so I don't think heat dissipation is the main problem there. As everything is made smaller, chips can be run on lower voltages and generate less heat anyway. For mobile devices you are pretty limited in how far you can spread things out as well. I did refer to desktop CPUs in the GP post, but that was me being a moron as I just found it easier to visualise a desktop layout than a laptop one, seeing as I haven't fully taken apart many laptops.

Re:Excellent

[Loke the Dog]

To put it simply: That is not a big problem, there are many ways around it. The big problem, I would say, is that refrigeration requires energy which is in short supply for laptops. Whats even worse is that refrigeration allows the computer itself to consume more energy, which creates a circle that just isnt sustainable.

This basic idea has been around for ages, and it has never been put to use simply because it creates more problems than it solves. Do we really need more CPU power in laptops? Is that really what we need from them? No, improved human interface devices, uptime and bandwidth are more important goals.