Ionic Winds Chilling Your Computer 89
Iddo Genuth writes to mention The Future of Things online magazine is reporting that Kronos Advanced Technologies in cooperation with Intel and the University of Washington claims to have developed a new type of ultra-thin, silent cooling technology for processors. The piece covers many of the cooling technologies currently available, how their new corona discharge cooler works, and a short interview with several of the key team members.
Re:Snakeoil, Mostly (Score:3, Interesting)
It's also desirable for its low power consumption; he claims it uses 0.1W. A good CPU cooler can easily draw 3W and is likely to draw at least 1.5W - most seem to be rated at 2W or higher. A laptop CPU fan should still be around .5 W at minimum, and lots of them are higher. This not only removes a moving part (the fan) but cuts the power consumption for cooling down to a fifth or less.
What about all that dust? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:dupe? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Kronos device is to be the same size as the CPU.
From TFA: Current prototypes have an active region of several cubic millimeters, and we are working to reduce that. However, the size of the device is going to be related to the heat dissipation requirements and size of the heat source. In some applications it is possible that the size of the device would have a similar footprint of the chip to be cooled and a height of only several millimeters.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? (Score:4, Interesting)
First, for corona discharge to occur at all requires thousands of volts of energy. Basically enough to leap off the conductor -- and into the semiconductor. This is easily several times the amount of voltage needed to fry any VLSI chip.
Second, the amount of airflow generated by corona discharge is infinitesimal, especially given the amount of energy required to get it to happen at all. Some simple thermal models will tell you how much air you have to displace in order to remove a given amount of heat, and you'll see that you're never going to get that kind of volume moved via corona discharge.
Maybe there have been some new discoveries since I last played with static electricity. But personally I think someone's shoveling bovine offal.
Schwab
Causes more problems than it solves (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's an idea! Use thermal currents! Just heat the air above the chip! That causes the air to expand, rise from the chip, and carries the heat away!
High voltage. Dust magnet. Electrical noise producer. Snake oil. Forget it.
Re:double entendre (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever seen one of those Ionic Breeze air filters from The Sharper Image? They use the same principles, except that one of the plates is rather large, in order to attract dust out of the air and adhere to it.
They move quite a bit of air; it's enough to blow a candle flame over 45 degrees. So it makes sense that you could use one as a "no moving parts" fan, if you wanted to.
Calling it a "corona discharge cooler" sounds cool, but really it's not much more sophisticated than an air filter. The miniaturization might be difficult, but I don't think the basic technology is anything that new or farfetched.
Re:Causes more problems than it solves (Score:2, Interesting)
What if the CPU die was built on an open grid (like a gauze surface)
Let the air come through from under the motherboard and straight through the middle.
Mechanics are better than they imply! (Score:3, Interesting)
The second thing is the statement about noise. First mechanical fans can be very silent. Second, much of the remaining noise will be from the airflow! They will have the same noise as well, and nothing can prevent that! For the same cooling effect, they do need the same airflow. There is no way around that.
Finally, who really wants to stick some high-voltage generator into a PC that consists mostly of parts very sensitive to high voltages?
Side note: A completely passive heatsink can very well reach cooling performance comparable to current active CPU coolers. It will not even be more expensive. But it will be larger, e.g. 20cm x 20cm, and will need to be mounted on the outside of the case. This is routinely done with power semiconductors in, e.g., amplifiers. For a CPU, a heatpipe construction could be used. CPUs are actively cooled today, because it is cheaper with a cheap fan or it is completely acceptable in noise levels with a more expensive cooler.
I already have a better version working. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's now dead, as one of the people we invited in to help manage thought he would just declare himself the owner just a week before we were to get a $500K grant from the California Energy Commission. When he failed he just trashed the company realizing founders (including myself) were left with nothing. He even managed to get GoDaddy to take the domain out of my name with forged corperate papers, it's been wedged since...
It really breaks my heart. We developed so many very cool prototypes and inventions for cooling computers.
One was using the Ionic Breeze technique to provide just a slight air flow, but it increases the efficiency of the heat sink but a large amount. Problem that they fail to mention is the heatsink really attracts dust, just like the ionic breaze, so you need to get in there with a brush quite often.
Below is a link to many of the prototypes I built. I don't have a photo of the ionic version, but it was just the desktop unit with the large aluminum heatsinks with a plastic duct/ shield was added and a set of fine wires was run across the bottom of the large aluminum heat sinks with -6000V DC on it.
The aluminum heat sinks were grounded.
Worked great, but you wouldn't' want to stick your finger in there.
Also in the picture are water cooled prototypes, Carbon Fiber "bridges" that had a much higher thermal conductivity then copper and other misc stuff.
I am planning to add many more photo's, papers, data and schematics and open source the designs at this point...
http://www.silentcomputing.com/i.html [silentcomputing.com]
Hey, I worked with these guys! (Score:3, Interesting)
They've got some innovative takes on the ionic drive, including keeping ozone production WAY down. Also, with proper panel design, you can get some wicked airflow - we were playing with a 12" x 12" x 7" thick multi-stage panel that would move 700 CFM. Yes, that really blows!
One thing to remember is that the voltage required scales with distance. It's on the order of 5 kV/cm, so if you're down to a mm you "only need" 500V to make it work.
And no, you don't want a discharge! Sparking is BAD. Corona effect is to be avoided - you want to operate just below that point, were you get good ion flow from emitter to collector, but no corona to generate ozone, or sparks.
On the whole, if you ABSOLUTELY NEED zero moving parts, this is a good way to go. You can get high airflow AND dust filtration in a relatively compact form factor. But it's not cheap, and getting it UL certified isn't exactly the easiest (although it has been done for some products; I worked with them on a few new products and led their team in a couple of research projects).