Curtin component cooling chills computer chips

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 19 May 2010 02:36

IT Industry - Development

Researchers at an Australian university have devised a more efficient type of fluid cooling that could allow the construction of faster computers.

One of the problems facing computer designers is keeping components cool enough for sustained operation and an acceptable life.

Curtin University of Technology researchers have devised a cooling method that can provide up to four times the thermal enhancement of current methods used in electronic cooling.

The work has been done by Associate Professor Tilak Chandratilleke (head of mechanical engineering at Curtin), Dr Ramesh Narayanaswamy and Dr Deepak Jagannatha. The method uses a pulsing fluid jet (a 'synthetic jet') that interacts with the flow of coolant through microchannels in a special heat sink.

According to Chandratilleke, the system does not require additional fluid circuits or extra fluid pumping costs. The improved cooling "is a necessity if we are to develop faster computer processors and more powerful electronic devices," he said.

Synthetic jets have been used in other cooling applications, but not in electronics, said Chandratilleke. However, a 2007 paper 'Synthetic jets for forced air cooling of electronics' describes the use of synthetic jets to cool a PCI-E graphics card, and US patent 6123145 'Synthetic jet actuators for cooling heated bodies and environments' includes the example of using synthetic jets to cool "a microchip array in a microcomputer."

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