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.
double entendre (Score:5, Funny)
Now that's what I call vaporware.
Re:double entendre (Score:5, Informative)
Exibit A: "Modern heatsinks are incapable of effectively cooling high-end CPUs, not to mention high-end GPUs, without the assistance of a fan." Tell that to owners of Tuniq towers.
B: "The most popular method for cooling modern computers is based on pushing air using fans. This method is sometimes combined with passive cooling,..." Sometimes? Anyone tried pointing a fan at a chip and praying recently?
C: "Active cooling is much more efficient than passive cooling alone and is also relatively cheap." By what measure of efficiency? Not power consumption. I assume they mean efficacious.
D: "Water has a higher specific heat capacity as well as better thermal conductivity relative to that of air (meaning water can transfer heat over greater distances more efficiently than air)". No, that's not what that means and the bogus interpretation isn't even accurate (never mind precise). Tell that to a jet engine exhaust. "higher specific heat capacity as well as better thermal conductivity" means it can soak up more heat per unit volume, and it can pull that heat from a smaller area than in the case of air. Physics 001.
Then they describe what sounds like "point a fan at a chip and pray". Unless ionised gases have some miraculous thermal properties I have never heard of, how do they get around the surface area problem. Aha, from TFA, they're targeting mobile devices. So these things have pissant cooling power. Anyone else concerned about putting ionised gases (aka free radicals) near their face? Advertising bumph. Case closed. How sad.
Re:double entendre (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with electrostatics is that they have a tendency to charge any metallic object within their field.
I took apart one the cheap $20 ionic air filter and did some experiments with electrostatic propulsion just for fun. It's not much above the 8KV range. However, put an aluminum can an inch or two away and touch it with a grounded metal object and you get a small spark from the aluminum can. So if you did have something like this in your machine, you better shield it so it doesn't inadvertently fry some other component.
I can't imagine them implementing an ionic cooler at too much less than 8KV. At 1 KV, you're not going to get anything as far as ionic wind goes. My guess is that they wouldn't use anything less than 5KV.
You also have to make sure that all the ions get neutralized, or you'd end up with objects being charged again.
You'd also have to be mindful of dust collection (which ionic breeze machines do exceptionally well) and be in a relatively stable environment.
To maximize ionic wind, you need the electron source to be on the verge of arcing to the anode (arcing kills the breeze). Unfortunately, this is dependant on many factors including air pressure, humidity, temperature, etc. So they would probably play it safe and set it back a bit to prevent arcing. Of course this lowers the wind, which means they need to use a higher voltage to acheive the same effect.
I'm not saying it is impossible, but it's also not a walk in the park either. Electrostatics and computer components don't play well together. And given the power of most modern day cpu fans, you're going to need a lot more than a mere 5-8 KV ionic wind to achieve the same cooling effect.
Now if they were talking about electrohydrodynamics using water, that's a little different. Basically, you can use electrohydrodynamics to pump water in a liquid cooling system without needing any moving parts. The concept is very similar to using an ionic breeze, only this time the medium is water. Since you have a denser medium, you can generate more force using electostatics (you can knock more electrons free as there are more in the immediate area).
You still run into the problem of high voltage and shielding, but a liquid cooled system without any moving parts sounds pretty interesting to me.
~X~
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I believe someone makes a product what does something similar using a low-temperature fusable metal, like Galinstan. Except that it uses basic electromagnetics rather than electrostatic.
The liquid metal is in an aluminum tube with a thin plastic layer on the inside, and has a small current run thro
Or, to put it more simply (Score:2)
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Speaking of physics (Score:2)
I really think that charged ions (tautology used for emphasis) are the best thing to have around inside an electrically sensitive device like a computer (you know, all this "ground your-self by touching the metal case before opening and manipulating electronic components" stuff).
Not to mention that ions can stick and accumulate, both clogging faster the computer with dust, and doing bad effects on the computer users' lung health.
No thanks. I'll stick to watercooling / heat pipes / bo
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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 filte
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Re:double entendre (Score:5, Informative)
version 1 [inventgeek.com]
version 2 [inventgeek.com]
Vapourware or b33rware? (Score:4, Funny)
That's a team I want to be on (Score:5, Funny)
I sure hope that they remember to remove the lime first.
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And while you're at it, try a nicer brew like a Cantina or an Amstel.
dupe? (Score:3, Informative)
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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.
hmm (Score:3, Informative)
It will be too toxic (Score:3, Insightful)
im sure that discharge is perfectly healthy! (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/ozonegen.html [epa.gov]
Matter of scale (Score:3, Informative)
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Another numberless article (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Another numberless article (Score:4, Funny)
Can you specify what makes an article 'Slashdot material?'
Re:Another numberless article (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another numberless article (Score:5, Funny)
but then...how would anything ever...? *head explodes*
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It has to be a press release.
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Snakeoil, Mostly (Score:4, Informative)
This does have a place in mobile computing because fans have pretty strict size and shape limitations. Also, silence is golden to many. Other than that, a fan and heatsink should offer far superior performance.
TW
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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
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TW
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Right. You don't really know.
First you should study the basics of the problem at hand.
Take a look at this plot of thermal resistance vs airflow for a typical heatssink. [aavidthermalloy.com] Note that thermal resistance does not decrease linearly with increased airflow.
Now look at the specs for so [ebmpapst.us]
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IMHO, this sounds very (too) low. He has to have some kind of flyback converter generating somewhere from 1kV to 8kV (from the article), and my guess is that it is at the higher end of that range. Now, in order to make this anywhere near safe, it probably has to be designed with semi-insulators rather than insulators (don't want people getting shocks after it is turned off), so even if the corona discharge has minimal current, the losses will be significant. Also, the flyback converter
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That 0.1W was for cooling one square centimetre of some unspecified material at an unspecified temperature by some unspecified amount. That's simply not enough information to say anything at all about the cooling performance, certainly not enough to compare it to some other cooling system. You at least need to know what it was cooling, how hot it was and how much it was cooled by. Other relevant details (air temperature, pressure and humidity; material being cooled...) would be ideal, but we can make reaso
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I generally don't hear my notebook's fans, unless I put my ears up to it, and maybe a little bit if I have it maxed out. Said notebook, with fans set to run at 2000RPM, is for my intents, close enough to silent that I wouldn't argue about it. It is also cool enough to use on my lap for long periods of time.
Even my workstation's cooling is sufficiently quiet for me, much quieter than most consumer desktops. Just spend a little bit of time an
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The CD/DVD units produce more noise when powering up than any other part of my system.
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...Attracts the incoming air like a magnet! (Score:2, Funny)
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What about all that dust? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Ozone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ozone (Score:4, Informative)
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
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However, I'd still say there's little point, since any advantages are far outweighed by the disadvantages:
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Buuu! Energy is not measured in volts. Attempts at debunking things while failing to make basic electrical sense are not impressive. Try harder next time.
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Okay, fine, Jack Sarfatti. Corona discharge requires thousands of volts, period. The actual energy involved is quite low, since the Amperes, and therefore resultant Power, is quite small. And, as we all know, Energy is Power multiplied by Time, so...
But the original thrust of my objection remains: Getting thousands of volts near expensive semiconductors
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Okay, so clearly I had difficulty in Physics 101. That doesn't change the fact that an errant high voltage discharge will turn your shiny Intel Core Duo into a useless, if well-machined, piece of sand...
Here's more than you could have ever thought you wanted to know about Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) [esda.org], and why it's so bloody dangerous to get even as little as 100 volts near an unsuspecting chip.
Schwab
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This is a dumb idea (Score:1, Offtopic)
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.
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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.
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Ozone (Score:1)
a lot have asked.... (Score:1)
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Seagate do this with their latest external hard drives though, and it seems to work quite well (and they are nice and quiet too) - nut the near triangular shape makes balancing stuff on top quite hard
Give John Sokol the credit (Score:3, Informative)
Oh my. (Score:2)
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A first? (Score:2)
Tell me more when it comes to market. (Score:2)
This is not a new idea (Score:2)
IAVRT signed a contract (Score:3, Funny)
ionized air is toxic (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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YOu have a fan where the blades don't make any noise? sweet...linky please.
I must be tired, lets try this again.... (Score:2)
Do you have a fan where the blades don't make any noise? sweet...linky please.
Sharper Image (Score:2)
And if you order within the next 20 minutes, they will give
you a smaller Ionic chiller free for chilling your handheld
computer.
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]
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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).
someone's already doing this... (Score:2)
another article (Score:2)
and recently i saw an episode of mythbusters where they used the same (i think) technology to create a hovering triangle thing. they were testing "anti-gravity" devices, and this was the only thing that surprised them. when they plugged it in, it shot up in the air. after some bewilderment, they realized it was ionizing the air and blowing it down, in turn causing thrust upwards.
Star Wars (Score:2)