collaboration of university researchers and top industry experts
has created a pumpless liquid cooling system that uses
nanotechnology to push the limits of past designs. One
fundamental computing problem is that there are only two ways to
increase computing power -- increase the speed or add more
processing circuits. Adding more circuits requires advanced chip
designs like 3D chips or, more traditionally, die shrinks that
are approaching the limits of the laws of physics as applied to
current manufacturing approaches. Meanwhile, speedups are
constrained by the fact that increasing chip frequency increases
power consumption and heat, as evidence by the gigahertz war
that peaked in the Pentium 4 era. A team led by Suresh V.
Garimella, the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Distinguished
Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, may
have a solution to cooling higher frequency chips and power
electronics. His team cooked up a bleeding edge cooler
consisting of tiny copper spheres and carbon nanotubes