New IBM technologies promise better chip cooling

[fameless]

http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/11119

What say you?

[BGP Spook]

Tricky.

They, from my understanding, talk about two different technologies.

1. A new heat spreader, which I am having trouble picturing in my mind.

2. Jet impingementation using thousands of micronozzles, which has been around for a while but never been practical. I remember reading about it in a discussion about the more exotic cooling ideas late last year.

EDIT:
Some pics.

[bigben2k]

It might be five times better than air, but I wonder if it's worth the expense, over "old school" water cooling.

[Spot]

This cooling technology reminds me of something familiar I read at Cooligy some time ago, http://www.cooligy.com/micro_structure_cooling.html

[Jag]

Here's a link with some pics:
http://light.pcinpact.com/actu/news/...tercooling.htm

[fameless]

Originally Posted by Spot

This cooling technology reminds me of something familiar I read at Cooligy some time ago, http://www.cooligy.com/micro_structure_cooling.html

Yeah, I remember reading about that back in '03.

[Marci]

I'll just repost what I put up in the same thread over at XS...

Old news for one crowd, new news for the avg joe... some of us have been aware of IBM's research for years - this particular cooling methodology and IBM's attention on it has been bouncing round for about 7 years now.

It should be noted, IBM's technology is to be implemented at the CPU level, not by the end-user. IE: It's doubtful you'll be able to buy a block. This will be incorporated into the CPU by the manufacturer, and the CPU will come with it all prefitted. It will be a STOCK cooling solution, not for performance overclocking.

See this article from Nov 2005... and this one from August 2005, This PDF from Nov 2003, this list of links from 2001...

They're basically adapting old research from 70s Jet Impingement cooling technology and refreshing it for use with newer processors at the home-user and corporate-user level, as opposed to the mainframe server market...

Have a google for "microchannel jet impingement IBM" and look back thru the results... this has been a matter of ongoing development in discussion for quite sometime, it's just never made it to end-user forums. S'been brought up in discussions at ProCooling on and off for ages...

There's always been a wealth of info on how the big-guns perceive watercooling for PCs, along with their proposed solutions... but all are for stock wattages, designed for mass production, rather than as an addon accessory for the enthusiast market.