Chip Chiller

Wiesel Werkstätte writes "Nature (just call me Natureboy) reports that a team at the University of California/Santa Barbara have developed a a silicon nano-scale superlattice that can be fabricated directly on chips to cool individual components thermoelectrically."

Re:More important than it may seem

[peccary]

While it's true that there are some spots on the chip that run hotter than others, keep in mind that this actually consumes additional power to provide that localised cooling. Therefore, it cools hot spots at the expense of heating up the whole chip. So it's not a pancea for, eg, the heating problems facing a rackmounted server. (And since this has to be designed into the chip, it's obviously of little use to the home overcoo^H^Hlocker.)

This technology would be useful for creating that 2GHz P4, but the thing would be hotter than a Kenner EZBake Oven, and it would be very difficult to get that heat out of the case before it cooked some other components.

Why waste this this on chips?

[the_other_one]

I'm thinking self cooling beer can's.

On second thought throw in the chips.

I want to play quake on a self cooling beer can.

Military applications. . .

[Selanit]

And when the military uses this cooling tech in the direct neural interfaces for their exoskeletons [wired.com], this will give a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Stay frosty!"

;-)

More important than it may seem

[martyb]

IANACD (I am not a chip designer) but it strikes me that this technology has the opportunity to provide a rapid increase in processor speed. As the article notes, there are localized areas on chips that run hotter than the rest of the chip.

Emperical Method: Thermal imaging of a running chip would point out where the hot spots are. Move a few circuits around, refab using some of these on-chip chip-chillers, repeat.

Theoretical Method: Chip designers surely must know where the power ebbs and flows. I would expect that they could estimate even during the design stage, where the likely hot spots are going to be. Drop in a chip-chiller (or two) and you can design more aggressively than would otherwise have been possible.

Other applications: I don't know if this would pan out, but I would suspect that this technology would also permit the design and development of chips that could handle much higher ambient temperatures. Could be handy in harsh environments (cars, industry, space).

Mmmm....

[neur0]

The Cupcake effect: Whenever there is a cupcake, there is a need for a napkin.

peltier with a large heatsinkfan combo? No.

[Jill Bates]

I'll say these miniature peltiers are to be used with high-temperature superconductors to cool the chips. It is a known problem to get the chips to dissipate heat thru the traditional construct. Now if they could add these miniature peltiers on top of the components, and if they could mask a layer of HT superconductor to all these peltier islands, then heat generated could be collected and transfered to any destination with ease.

May be one day, we'll see on the chip's pin out a pin to connect to a heat sink.

Now, I am really waiting for room-temperature superconductor to come.

Wouldn't these also generate heat?

[Yottabyte84]

From what I gather these are just tiny built in peltiers, which cool by moving heat. So these new chips will need huge heatsink-fan combos, most likely. This sounds like a waste of time, as it's much easier, and more effective to just stick a peltier with a large heatsinkfan combo on the chip.

This has lots of uses

[human bean]

Consider creating a "cell modifier" with one of these. A fluid channel is etched into the wafer, cells float by and are examined by some means (size, imaging, fluorescence, etc.) "bad" cells are frozen in spot by tiny thermolectric cooler and destroyed by electrical current or heat. Now make thousand of them on a wafer. put multiple wafers together. Now you have a device that can filter enough fluid to be useful in treating patients. Maybe you don't even happen to make channels, you just create spots on the wafer and immerse the working surface, and let brownian motion work it out.

Scientific Enhancement

[Cheese_isgood]

So far, these "micro-refridgerators" will prove to be very helpful in protecting the chip from over heating, but if scientists come up with a more efficient way of cooling the chips and still keeping it compact the electricity would flow at a much faster rate. Hence allowing you to ultimately speed up your computer!