Digit – Thinkdigit Technology Guides | Technology News Reviews |Free Downloads | Video

Emerald Dreams

Posted on 01-08-2008

Dragging your processors 24x7? Overclocking your machines? Paying soaring power bills? Read through this section to find innovative researches and their implementation that claims to reduce your costs to nearly one fourth!

Related Stories:

Electricity is one of the most important sources of energy that drives us. According to International Energy Outlook 2008, an official energy statistical release by the US government, global electricity generation will nearly double from about 17.3 trillion kilowatt-hours in 2005 to 24.4 trillion kilowatt-hours in 2015 and 33.3 trillion kilowatt-hours in 2030. Even though nuclear power and other means of electricity generation will increase over the period, the most carbon-intensive source—coal-will still dominate, says the report.

Last month, we carried a news snippet underscoring the research initiatives for harnessing mechanical energy into electrical energy that can be used to power your portables. However, on a larger scale there are many initiatives being undertaken to reduce the carbon footprints in the domains of computing, and daily lifestyles in general. It is not only computing that matters, there are these all new breed of hybrid vehicles and electric cars, organic fuels including bio-diesels and natural gases, fuel cells and so on. We at Digit delve a bit deeper to give you a sneak peek on how these greener initiatives will change the face of our technology and reduce our carbon footprints.

As the transistor count of today’s microprocessors increases, overheating and power dissipation is becoming a vital issue. As we move towards growing transistor microprocessors, the increasing power budgets of these chips must be addressed. Research carried out at Purdue suggests that after exceeding 35 to 40 W, additional power dissipation increases the total cost per CPU chip by more than a dollar per watt.

Efficient Cooling Systems

Research initiatives for efficient cooling systems are inevitable. Especially when current technologies available for cooling cannot break beyond 200 watts of heat per square centimetre. A Purdue university research team led by Professor Issam Mudawar not only managed to break this barrier, but exceeded it by over five times when they created a way to cool chips that generate more than 1,000 watts of heat per square centimetre.

A fan is an almost inevitable component of the same. However, even if these are sufficient for basic computer applications like business computing and Net surfing, this method is rendered ineffective when the machines are revved by gamers and overclockers.

The new technology is based on a water cooling system as against the conventional air cooled ones. The method implements series of microjets that distributes a coolant in miniscule channels over the top of the chip. The coolant in this case is a hydrofluorocarbon. The heat generated by the chips cause these narrow grooves to heat up, which in turn causes the coolant liquid to vapourise.

One of the biggest advantages of liquid cooling over the conventional air cooled methods is the uniform pattern of cooling seen in the former. The reason being, while the airflow cannot be kept under control, coolant liquid jets can be maintained uniformly along the length of micro channels. Uniform cooling prevents formation of any hotspots and increases the life of the processors.

Mudawar explains that it is not the superior properties of the coolant that results in such a significant improvement in cooling mechanism, but it is the hybrid nature of the overall mechanism. It’s hybrid because it relies on two cooling methods: greater surface area via the microchannels and better circulation via the microjets. The coolant collects at both ends of the channels and is circulated back through the system.