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."

Cooling channels allow chip fabrication in 3D!

[jlseagull]

Chips fabbed in 3D have numerous advantages - short trace lengths, higher density, etc. However, the problem with all of them is getting the heat out with today's convective cooling technologies. This technology will allow multiple cores in 3D to operate without overheating, and that's a good thing as the number of cores in personal computers and servers continues to increase.

I have a better idea. . .

[kimvette]

Why not implement oh, I don't know, say, a Peltier Junction directly into the heat spreader? Since you KNOW there is going to be a heat sink (no warranty if no heatsink is used) then any overheating concerns from running the junction without a heat sink are moot.

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) -- they're over-complicating the solution. Fluid directly in the chip might be a good idea, but let conduction and natural convection handle the heat transfer to the heat spreader. Don't over-complicate this thing with a pump that can break the second a nanometer particle gets into the system.

Cooligy System

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a system that is doing something similiar, but on a larger scale. http://cooligy.com/micro_channel_cooling.html [cooligy.com]

Pointless for desktop PCs

[Rob Simpson]

"Innovative cooling systems will be needed for future computer chips that will generate more heat than current technology"

Except for supercomputers, servers, and hard-core gamers with air conditioning, who is going to want chips that will generate substantially more heat than current chips? If CPUs alone start using hundreds of watts of power, people are going to take notice, and even the most naive shopper will start taking this into account. Already, Intel has realized [wikipedia.org] that their ridiculous space heaters are a dead end.

Can it withstand cold temperatures?

[DaFrogBoy]

"The prototype chip contains numerous water-filled micro-channels, grooves about 100 microns wide, or about the width of a human hair."

Being that I live in the north, I am a bit skeptical about water being inside of the chip. They didn't mention anything about how it can handle cold temperatures.

If you were to transport an item with one of these cooling mechanisms in the winter time (perhaps to a repair location) is there the potential that the water in the channels could freeze? Would it be capable of withstanding that amount of expansion when the water becomes ice?