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Startup Offers Peltier-On-Chip

Posted by timothy on Thu Jan 10, 2008 06:02 PM
from the chill-man-it's-cool-it's-cool dept.
Power Upgrades Hardware Technology
LowSNR writes "The South Carolina based startup Nextreme, Inc. is developing technology to put Peltier Coolers in chip packages, according to an Ars Technica report. The tiny coolers could be situated on top of local hotspots on the die and pump heat away through a package pin to the motherboard. Also, the Seebeck Effect allows the waste heat to be used to be harvested to generate/reclaim power."
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Submission: Startup offers Peltier-On-Chip by LowSNR (1138511)
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  • Cool. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That's cool.

    Har har.
  • I think the heat recycling aspect itself shows some promise, and the design being built into the chip, but we have to consider that the same kind of designers that use these are just as likely to push the chip beyond the capabilities in terms of the total heat reduction for the system.

    People who tend to overclock or use overclocked chips, will frequently push the envelope even further if they think they can get away with it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Naughty Bob (1004174)
      Both the heat recycling and heat reduction aspects of this start-up's tech work fine and would be extremely useful and practical, were it not for one small problem: The technology requires the entire CPU/GPU's circuit layout to be designed with this technology in mind. I'm betting that more pressing issues will influence the direction of chip development.
    • Um, this isn't anything special. All a peltier is is a bloody heat pump. In this case they figured out how to selectively locate where the TEC is applied. Back in the day (mid to late 90's) they used to attach a refrigerator to the chip. I thought it was a rather novel idea until I discovered that people playing with medical equipment and/or lasers were using TECs to pump off excessive heat from their devices. I tipped off the folks over at Tom's Hardware and a few months later people playing with thes
  • I imagine this would only solve the problem for the first millimeters , you'd still need a pretty big heat sink somewhere. Would this open up the door for really high frequencies or would it just optimize things a little ?

  • Yawn (Score:3, Funny)

    by skintigh2 (456496) on Thursday January 10 2008, @06:15PM (#21992362)
    Call me when they put a miniature Sterling engine on a chip and use it to recharge the battery.
    • This 90's video gallery website show you various MEMS device, including a steam engine (2nd video) http://www.memx.com/movie_gallery.htm [memx.com]

      They use electrical power to vaporize water and generate mechanical momentum for MEMS device. I am not sure if the water circuit is opened or closed. If closed, this would qualify as a Stirling engine.

  • Do you have Peltier on a chip? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Someone let him out! [wikipedia.org]
  • Gee I had this idea about 20 years ago, & I suspect many readers here also had a similar sense of deja vu when they read this! Oh well, more power to them...

  • Useful, but not new (Score:5, Informative)

    by smellsofbikes (890263) on Thursday January 10 2008, @06:34PM (#21992600) Journal
    Peltier devices on-chip have been used for a while, whenever temperature variations are intolerable. Some examples: Analog Devices AD595 thermocouple amp [analog.com], which uses in-chip thermal calibration to ensure a cold junction of known temperature, and many voltage regulators and switching supply controllers that use temperature-controlled bandgaps as their voltage reference.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by evanbd (210358)

      I've only glanced at the data sheet, but unless I'm severely mistaken, that chip *compensates* for temperature rather than controlling it. Every other thermocouple CJC chip I've seen does the same basic thing. Temperature compensated voltage references follow the same basic patter of balancing a bandgap or zener with a Vbe drop and possibly some second order effects. The very best such chips (eg the Linear Technology LTZ1000; I'm sure there are other similar ones) use a heater. Temperature-controlled cr

      • It's possible I'm wrong, but that's what I've been told by coworkers who design bandgap references. I don't do chip design or know that much about it: I know they're heated, but coworkers indicated they were actively cooled as well, if necessary.

        • I certainly wouldn't say it's not done... but I've never seen an example of it. For inexpensive devices, the temperature isn't controlled, but the coefficient is balanced against something with the opposite coefficient. For more expensive devices, the temperature is controlled and kept above ambient because that's easier and cheaper. I can't imagine any case where that wouldn't work, unless perhaps you needed to run in a very hot environment -- but then I would think you'd want to cool the entire enclos

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by raidfibre (1181749)
      Cold-point compensation does not mean it actively heats or cools anything on the chip.
      Check the data sheet.
      http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Data_Sheets/AD594_595.pdf [analog.com]
  • The article says it's in North Carolina, not SC. Much as I wish it were here...
  • I confess this is not my area of expertise so I have my alabaster underpants in readiness for a good flaming.

    But does this mean they can cool the chip without the heat sink/fan combo, or will they still need some method a pumping the heat around the chip to the areas that can process it. I mean comparatively the chip is quite big and we are only looking at one top layer of it surely?

    I can hear my computer whirring as I type, anything that offers hope to get rid of that noisy thing gets my vote.
    • > alabaster underpants

      I think you mean asbestos - possibly less conductive of heat and more conducive of comfort (relatively speaking).

    • But does this mean they can cool the chip without the heat sink/fan combo

      Heat engines, thermocouples, etc. don't harness "hot". They harness the flow of heat. If you do not provide any place for that heat to move to, they can't do anything.

      Now, if you just want to get rid of that noisy fan, get a heat pipe and have it move the heat from your CPU to your chassis (if suitable) or to a radiator cooled by a much larger, slower, quieter fan.

    • Well, not really. Even an ideal heat pump could only push the energy from here to there. More realistic ones however produce some heat of their own.

      That's right. Your fridge doesn't just move energy from inside to the radiator outside, it actually dissipate a little extra heat of its own. If you left the fridge door open, it would actually heat the kitchen a little. An air conditioner, ditto, that electricity it uses has to go somewhere, which means heating the outside air. It's no different for a Peltier.
    • i think the problem is that most people seem to be focused on this as applied to CPUs and the cooling of CPUs. it simply doesn't seem practical for that because the heat generated by CPUs is generally very high. seems to me that the best applications would be small chips that serve other functions. say you've got a chip that gets just a little too hot for its environment, dump some heat out into the printed circuit board. it could save manufacturing costs versus gluing a small heat sink to the chip.

      but
  • As cool as it is to use the peltier effect to cool chips, in no way is the "reclaimed heat" going to be enough to generate any significant amount of power.

    I don't mind companies spouting marketing drivel, because that's what companies with marketing departments do. But this whole "fake green" thing that's going on recently has got to stop.
    • Never heard of a Sterling Engine before, have you?

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Pyrrus (97830)
        Never heard of carnot efficiency before, have you?

        Any energy recovered from this small temperature differential would be miniscule compared to the initial cost of putting a stirling engine in a computer. It costs energy to run the peltier plate as a heat pump, if you want low power it'd be less difficult and cheaper to just build a bigger heat sink.
    • Sorry, as long as the "Environmentally friendly" movement is underway, we'll need to endure the "fake green" thing. We can't have our cake and eat it too, apparently.

      It's actually an outgrowth of the "me too" syndrome. As long as being environmentally friendly is cool, pretending to be environmentally friendly will be cool too.
      • If you don't have your cake before you eat it doesn't that mean you're guilty of eating someone else's cake?

        • If you don't have your cake before you eat it doesn't that mean you're guilty of eating someone else's cake?
          ?????

          I can see that you're trying to be funny, but I can't tell if you're making a joke on topic or not.
          • It was a comment on the comment about having your cake and eating it...

            It was also posted prior to the regulation morning cup of coffee.
  • ... Cool Ranch chips?
  • Let's see, "cooler" is slang for prison, Leonard Peltier is being held at Leavenworth, so this company is offering little Leavenworth models in potato chip packages? Excellent.
      • Gee, you think an encyclopedia anonymously edited by anyone who feels like it might get something wrong [google.com] once in a while? It's possible that he was moved since 2005, but Leavenworth was where he was held then, according to the research I was able to do in the two minutes between deciding to make that silly joke and stupidly hitting "submit." It really wasn't that funny to begin with, but thanks for trying to ruin it anyway, Captain Bringdown ;)
  • I once thought of tossing one of these thermoelectric (TEC) coolers in my system to try and help with waste heat, but the trouble with the seebeck effect is that it reaches a cutoff point fairly quickly. You see, the "cool" side of the tec doesn't remain cool, it heats up as well meaning that the temperature difference grows gradually smaller and smaller, which in turn reduces output of voltage and becomes a vicious cycle, building up more and more heat on the hot side.

    TEC's are great when using the pel
    • The efficiency of the Seebeck effect is limited by the thermal isolation of the heat source and heat sink. In a macroscale system, this generally isn't very good. In a microsystem it can be extremely good. Vacuum packaging would help even more, but that is probably overkill here.
    • Can I use the excess heat from my P4 to produce the energy for my p4?

      Only if you use IPv6 on the motherboard and IPv4 on the daughterboard.

    • Re:Perpetum Mobile ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ultranova (717540) on Thursday January 10 2008, @06:38PM (#21992662)

      Can I use the excess heat from my P4 to produce the energy for my p4?

      In theory, yes; the chip is hotter than its environment, so you can put a heat engine between them and generate energy. The maximum theoretical efficiency of this process is given by Carnot cycle [wikipedia.org] and depends on the heat difference between the processor and the environment and the temperature of the environment. With current processors you can't really exceed 60 degree Celsius, or 333 Kelvin, and the environment is typically at 20 degree Celsius, or 293 Kelvin, so the maximum theoretical efficiency is around 12%.

      Of course, if you could find more durable materials, you could just insulate the processor, let it heat up to a thousand degree Celsius or so, and get nearly 77 percent efficiency. The hotter you run the processor, the more efficient the system becomes; a hypothetical plasma-state processor at 10,000K would give a theoretical efficiency of 97%.

      It would also give a whole new meaning to "flamebait" ;).

      • http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/thermalflow.png [arstechnica.com]
        The picture shows they're dumping the heat into the PCB
        What I'm not really clear about is how that helps the cooling situation.
        Sure, you're moving heat from the CPU/GPU die, but not to a heatsink...
        So what's the point?

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by m85476585 (884822)
          The PCB is often used as a heatsink for SMD chips. It wouldn't work too well for a CPU, unless we adopt a new form factor with a surface area of 5,490 cm^2 [zalman.co.kr], or roughly a 2.5' square (and it would need a lot of heatpipes to make up for the extra distance between the CPU and the edges of the heatsink).
      • "In theory, no;"

        fixed it for you.
        I don't care how hot you get the chip, you can not get to 100%.

      • In theory, yes; the chip is hotter than its environment, so you can put a heat engine between them and generate energy. The maximum theoretical efficiency of this process is given by Carnot cycle [wikipedia.org] and depends on the heat difference between the processor and the environment and the temperature of the environment. With current processors you can't really exceed 60 degree Celsius, or 333 Kelvin,

        That is for the circuitry itself. But you can maintain a much hotter zone away from the sensitive p

      • Hmm, generating electricity from temperature differences between the hot end of the heat pump and the environment will make the hot end hotter than it would be with the system designed to simply dissipate heat as quickly as possible. This will make the heat pump consume more energy in the first place. Given that the actual efficiency of recapturing the energy is likely to be far less than the carnot cycle maximum, I wonder if this will ever be worth the trouble.

        • I was talking about a chip made from some hypothetical material which can withstand high temperatures and thus wouldn't need to be cooled. You would let it heat up as high as it goes and then let the heat run an electric generator to feed energy back into the batteries, thus reducing total drain. In fact, if the material can withstand high temperatures, it would make sense to put thermal insulation around it to get it as hot as possible, because this would increase the efficiency of the electricity generati

    • TMK, only if you reverse the electrical polarity to the junction. If you over drive the junction, you'll lose the effect and both sides will heat up.

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