New Heat Dissipation Method to Greatly Improve Performance

[Arthur Hanson]

Heat being the obstacle to driving high-performance semis, this new method of dealing with heat offers another method of increasing performance at what may be far better and lower cost than other methods. Any thoughts or comments on this would be appreciated.

New heat spreading tech delivers 740% increase in circuit power density

A team from the University of Illinois and UC Berkeley has demonstrated a new cooling method that sucks heat out of electronics so efficiently that it allows designers to run 7.4 times more power through a given volume than conventional heat sinks.

newatlas.com

 

[fansink]

Heat being the obstacle to driving high-performance semis, this new method of dealing with heat offers another method of increasing performance at what may be far better and lower cost than other methods. Any thoughts or comments on this would be appreciated.

The claims are confusing a little misleading.

“740% increase in the power per unit volume”

“A team from the University of Illinois and UC Berkeley has demonstrated a new cooling method that sucks heat out of electronics so efficiently that it allows designers to run 7.4 times more power through a given volume than conventional heat sinks.”

“7.4 times more” is not equal to 740% increase. 740% increase is 8.4 times more.

Their “plated heat sink” has a volume of approximately 0.35cc, whereas the 2 depicted finned heat sinks have a combined apparent volume of 33cc, which is 94 times the volume of the “plated heat sink”, but an actual volume of ~14cc, which is 40 times the volume of the “plated heat sink”.

Also, the finned heat sinks are immersion cooled heat sinks, but no mention of immersion testing.

I could likely design an immersion cooled finned heat sink with much less actual and apparent volume, with the same performance as the depicted finned heat sinks.

Finally, traditional circuit board internal Cu ground planes, and internal Cu heat spreading planes may offer similar thermal performance as the “plated heat sink”, at less cost, and much less risk.