Copper-Graphene Nanocomposite Cools Electronics Faster & Cheaper 56
samazon writes "North Carolina State University researcher Jag Kasichainula has developed a 'heat spreader' to cool electronics more efficiently using a copper-graphene composite, which is attached using an indium-graphene interface film. According to Kasichainula, the technique will cool 25% faster than pure copper and will cost less to produce than the copper plate heat spreaders currently used by most electronics (abstract). Better performance at a lower cost? Let's hope so."
Odd, hardware as "vaporware" (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, we've heard about dozens of better way to cool chips, from chips where the heat sink passes through the die, to silicon with fluid channels, to built-in peltiers, to microturbines, etc.
These all have the potential to dramatically improve cooling while reducing the cost to do so... And they all have the same glaring flaw - Where do I buy one?
Interesting. (Score:4, Interesting)
The biggest obstacle to higher clock speeds has been getting rid of the heat (which is why supercooled processors can be overclocked to 7 GHz). This could potentially lead to adding another GHz to clock speeds of domestic computers, perhaps 2 per node for top-end supercomputers. That's valuable, for although multicores are good, there just aren't that many decent parallel programmers out there. I (and a few others) find parallel programming easy but the vast majority of coders in the world got into the field as a way to get rich quick and aren't adept at anything beyond Visual Basic or the most trivial aspects of Java.
Badly-coded programs won't run better on multi-way chips, but can be forced to run faster on faster chips, so the only way to compensate for the lack of skill is to crank up the clock, which is only possible if you can avoid the chip cooking itself.
Re:Interesting. (Score:4, Interesting)