Boffins come up with new cooling idea

A TEAM of backroom boffins at Purdue University have come to the conclusion that the only way to keep the future generations of chip cool, is to install a set of micro-pumps.

The pumps will be small enough to fit on a computer chip and circulate coolant through channels etched into the chip.

Suresh Garimella, a professor of mechanical engineering is one of the team that has built the micro-pump which is about a centimetre square.

The technology is about to be formally announced in May's popular tabloid rag Electronics Cooling, but was leaked by Purdue in a press release here.

The prototype chip contains numerous water-filled micro-channels in grooves about 100 microns wide. Each channel is packed with hundreds of electrodes which create a travelling field. This field creates ions, or electrically charged atoms and molecules, which are dragged along by the moving field.

This causes water to flow around the chip and cool it all down. µ