A novel approach to water cooling PC chips is being
developed by researchers at IBM's Zurich laboratory.
The researchers are using a technique called "direct jet
impingement" to squirt water onto the back of the chip and suck it
off again in a closed system using an array of up to 50,000 tiny
nozzles and a complicated branched return architecture.
According to IBM, current cooling technologies, mainly based on
forced air convection (fans) blowing across heat sinks with densely
spaced fins, have reached their limits. This could become a major
problem as chips become more powerful.
The team has demonstrated cooling power densities of up to 370W
per square centimetre with water as the coolant. This is more than
six times beyond the current limits of air cooling techniques,
which provide about 75W per square centimetre. In addition, the
system uses much less energy for pumping than other cooling
systems, IBM said.
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