IBM boffins claim cooling breakthrough

IBM RESEARCHERS say they have developed a new technique to improve the cooling efficiency of chips. IBM's Zurich Research Lab has come up with an improved method of attaching chips to their heatsinks that can significantly enhance thermal efficiency.

Thermal paste is enriched with metal or ceramic particles which transfer heat from the chip to the cooler, but even highly particle-filled pastes are still inefficient, wasting up to 40 percent of the overall cooling capacity and the particles tend to bunch up resulting in uneven cooling.

But by using micrometer-sized channels on the chip, arranged in a tree-like pattern, a more even distribution of the particles can be achieved, reducing the thickness of the paste and improving its thermal efficiency by a factor of three. The development will allow conventional air cooling to remove more heat, reducing the need for more exotic and expensive cooling techniques, says IBM. µ

L'INQ
IBM Zurich