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IBM Keeps Chips Cool with New Technology By Tim Gray October 27, 2006 11:55AM IBM researchers have found a new way to keep computer chips cool, which is particularly important to prevent computers from overheating. Big Blue researchers say a new way of spreading thermal paste is the key, and the new cooling strategy was actually inspired by the natural branching patterns of tree roots and human veins.   Related Topics IBM Intel AMD Chips Latest News Endeavour Inspected for Damage Autism Risk for Kids of Older Mothers Go Online and You Can Save the Planet In Haiti, Relief Gaps Are Spreading U.S. To Form Climate-Change Agency Researchers at IBM say they have developed a new cooling technique for managing the temperature of computer chips. The method entails a new way of spreading thermal paste between hot chips and their heat sinks, making the paste as thin as possible to transport heat from the chip to the cooling components more efficiently. Finding a new approach for improving the cooling of computer chips has become increasingly important, especially as the large amount of heat released by today's powerful processors increases. "Electronic products are capable of amazing things, largely because of the more powerful chips at their heart," said Bruno Michel, manager of the Advanced Thermal Packaging research group at IBM's Zurich lab. "We want to help electronics makers keep the innovations coming. Our chip-cooling technology is just one tool at our disposal to help them do that." Nature's Simple Design IBM claims the technique, called "high thermal conductivity interface technology," allows a two-fold improvement in heat removal over current thermal paste methods. The innovation could pave the way for continued development of creative electronic products through the use of more powerful chips without needing complex and costly systems to cool them. Big Blue researchers say they were inspired by the natural branching patterns of tree roots and human veins, and they used these designs on the chip surfaces. When pressure is applied, the paste used to improve the thermal contact between chip and the attached heat sink spreads more evenly. Michel said this advance will allow engineers to design more powerful chips and continue to follow the Moore's Law trend of packing more transistors in ever smaller sizes. Micronozzle Method The "branched channel" design might also be advanced further, as IBM researchers are now saying it could also work with a water-cooling approach. Called "direct jet impingement," this method squirts water onto the back of the chip and sucks it off again in a closed system using an array of up to 50,000 micronozzles and a complicated tree-like architecture. The IBM team claims to have demonstrated cooling power densities of up to 370 watts per square centimeter with the water method. That's more than six times beyond the current limits of air-cooling techniques at about 75 watts per square centimeter. The micronozzle water system is several years away from industrial use.   Tell Us What You Think Your Comment: Also Visit: iPad Info Center Billions of Bytes Mobile Device Now Apple Info Center TopTechWire.com Advertisement  Computing 1.   Nvidia Auto-Switches Notebook GPU 2.   MS: Windows 7 Doesn't Hurt Battery 3.   Tips for More Windows 7 Productivity 4.   The Pros and Cons of Apple's iPad 5.   IBM Power7 Server Takes on Big Load EPIC Objects To Google-NSA Ties Cyberattack meant to rattle Google? Average Rating: Symbian 3 Is Now Fully Open Source But mobile OS remains linked to Nokia. Average Rating: Google Attack Highlights Black Market Paying for bug info is hotly debated. Average Rating:

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