New cooling solution for the next generation...

As we all know, the main barrier to having super-fast processors and chips is that they need cooling and today's technology just isn't up to the job. A few (nutters) people have experimented with overclocking processors and cooling them using liquid nitrogen - see this site for a P4 that reached 5.24Ghz clock speed when cooled to -190 degrees C, but this isn't really practical for most of us !

The BBC news site today mentions a new method of cooling chips which uses "ionic wind" to dissipate the heat produced by increasingly powerful devices. Apparently the reason why fans don't cool as much as we think they do is that as the air from the fan wafts over the chip, the molecules nearest to the chip's surface can get stuck and therefore hinder the cooling process. Purdue University researchers have developed a way to shift these "stuck molecules" by using a small voltage which when applied to the ionic engine positively charges particles at one end of the chip which are then dragged towards a negatively charged wire at the other end thereby forcing constant air movement. This effect apparently increases the cooling effect of conventional fans by a massive 250% which could mean that faster and smaller chips can be produced.

Blimey !