Micro-Pump is Cool Idea for Future Computer Chips

core plexus writes to tell us that Engineers at Purdue University have designed a tiny 'micro-pump' cooling device that can be used to circulate coolant through the channels etched on an individual chip. From the article: "The prototype chip contains numerous water-filled micro-channels, grooves about 100 microns wide, or about the width of a human hair. The channels are covered with a series of hundreds of electrodes, electronic devices that receive varying voltage pulses in such a way that a traveling electric field is created in each channel. The traveling field creates ions, or electrically charged atoms and molecules, which are dragged along by the moving field."

Whole new meaning to processor blocking

[syousef]

...and what's the term for a blocked CPU? Constipated???

Re:Whole new meaning to processor blocking

[ScrewMaster]

No ... constiputed.

Re:Cooling is not the only problem

[jlseagull]

(mouth moving out of sync with the words, as in a chop-socky flick)

"Your CMOS-fu is greater than mine! Please say more, so that I might sit and listen!"

Can you point to some more links on 3D fabrication? Thanks!

So very appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is this literally "cool," but many geeks are used to operating a micro-pump..........

[crickets...]

Micro is so 1960's

[beoswulf]

I expect and demand every cool discovery to be prefixed with "nano"

Need for new kernel error

[nitrocloud]

Now if our CPUs could drown, somewhere near the "printer on fire" error, there needs to be a "CPU is downing" error, right?

Re:Micro is so 1960's

[Bloke down the pub]

I expect and demand every cool discovery to be prefixed with "nano"

LOL, are you still wearing flares or something, d00d? Get with the program, it's all about nantwo-dot-o now.