Nanotechnology Delivers Revolutionary Pumpless Water Cooling

[Dave76]

Forget traditional metal block coolers a nanowick could remove 10 times the heat of current chip designs

A collaboration of university researchers and top industry experts has created a pumpless liquid cooling system that uses nanotechnology to push the limits of past designs.

One fundamental computing problem is that there are only two ways to increase computing power -- increase the speed or add more processing circuits. Adding more circuits requires advanced chip designs like 3D chips or, more traditionally, die shrinks that are approaching the limits of the laws of physics as applied to current manufacturing approaches. Meanwhile, speedups are constrained by the fact that increasing chip frequency increases power consumption and heat, as evidence by the gigahertz war that peaked in the Pentium 4 era.

A team led by Suresh V. Garimella, the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, may have a solution to cooling higher frequency chips and power electronics. His team cooked up a bleeding edge cooler consisting of tiny copper spheres and carbon nanotubes, which wick coolant passively towards hot electronics.

The coolant used is everyday water, which is transferred to an ultrathin "thermal ground plane" -- a flat hollow plate.

The new design can handle an estimated 10 times the heat of current computer chip designs. That opens the door to higher frequency CPUs and GPUs, but also more efficient electronics in military and electric vehicle applications.

The new design can wick an incredible 550 watts per square centimeter. Mark North, an engineer with Thermacore comments, "We know the wicking part of the system is working well, so we now need to make sure the rest of the system works."

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[Layback Bear]

Thanks Dave 76. I want it now for a new system.

 

[Dave76]

Me too, sounds like cooling issues will be over in about 5 years or so...