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IBM and 45nm Chip Development

Intel May Combine Silicon with Carbon Nanotubes. Story dated May 29.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1821412,00.asp

Excerpt:
Chip makers will continue to use silicon, which has long been the base material for chip manufacturing, for several more generations. Intel's roadmap, for one, includes at least four more silicon-based chip manufacturing process generations, with the last one beginning in 2011.

But the ability to decrease the size of today's silicon-based transistors, which in turn allows chip makers to boost their chips' performance by packing more transistors into each processor, will eventually hit a wall, leading chip makers to look elsewhere. (That date, which could change due to breakthroughs, is likely to be around 2020, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.)

That's the point at which carbon nanotubes, nanowires or other materials and manufacturing techniques made possible by nanotech research could come into play.
Click to expand...
What Are Carbon Nanotubes?
http://www.research.ibm.com/topics/popups/serious/nano/html/nanotubes.html
 
shamino said:
Do you have any idea why the industry has not embraced Peltier coolers? I see them sold all the times as parts, and they're commonly used by overclockers. But I've never seen a brand-name system use them.

My gut feeling tells me that these would work better than a water-cooled system. They would certainly be a lot smaller.
Click to expand...

I am not sure, part of the reason may be because the heat from the other side of the Peltier has to go somewere. Your chip will be much cooler, but you have a new heat source inside of your case to deal with now.

I sure wouldn't want the hot side of a peltier sitting against my leg, if it were mounted inside the bottom of my laptop! :eek: :D
 
840quadra said:
I am not sure, part of the reason may be because the heat from the other side of the Peltier has to go somewere. Your chip will be much cooler, but you have a new heat source inside of your case to deal with now.
Click to expand...
Yes, but that can be delivered via heat-pipe to a radiator/fan. So you end up with a system similar to what the G5 has, but without the need to have liquid in it.
840quadra said:
I sure wouldn't want the hot side of a peltier sitting against my leg, if it were mounted inside the bottom of my laptop! :eek: :D
Click to expand...
But laptops get really hot anyway. The Peltier element doesn't have to run at full-blast all the time - it only has to run enough to keep the chip within normal temperatures. If it does, then the heat exhaust should be no different from any other cooling solution.

Come to think of it, this might be the big problem with a G5 laptop. It might not be just a matter of keeping the chip cool, but also with getting the heat out of the case without burning the user.
 
shamino said:
Yes, but that can be delivered via heat-pipe to a radiator/fan. So you end up with a system similar to what the G5 has, but without the need to have liquid in it.
But laptops get really hot anyway. The Peltier element doesn't have to run at full-blast all the time - it only has to run enough to keep the chip within normal temperatures. If it does, then the heat exhaust should be no different from any other cooling solution.

Come to think of it, this might be the big problem with a G5 laptop. It might not be just a matter of keeping the chip cool, but also with getting the heat out of the case without burning the user.
Click to expand...


Actually, it's not as simple as that. The Peltier junction creates some heat while it's moving heat. So, in a laptop, where you're already having trouble getting rid of the heat, adding a component that will just create more heat isn't necessarily the best idea. And, non-liquid heat pipes aren't the most efficient means of moving heat around. If there's too much heat being produced (i.e. the heat of the processor and the heat of the Peltier junction combined), then these wouldn't be able to move the heat fast enough, and you'd be back to needing a liquid cooling system.
 
wdlove said:
If chip manufacturers have something better like the Carbon Nanotubes, why wait? Doesn't make sense not to push work on this if it will save on electricity and heat.
Click to expand...

Well, saying that they have something better, like Carbon Nanotubes, is a far cry from saying that they can implement them. Currently, it's possible to create an equivalent chip to the 970 using CNs, but each CN needs to be moved into place - and how many transistors does the 970 have? Until a means can be found to 'grow' the CNs in place, they can't be used for production chips. While CNs, arguably, provide an almost ideal solution to many of the problems that we face with current chips, providing nearly frictionless electron conduits (eliminating a significant source of heat), and path sizes an order of magnitude smaller than the smallest process we have today, until some means of mass producing identical arrays of the CNs can be found they're not going to be anything other than a scientific research field.

P.S. Do you think that they're not pushing research on this? They know that they're facing an end of development in the current mediums, and if they want computers to continue to get faster and more powerful, they need to find develop either a means of using CNs or another technology that can allow them to move past current mediums.
 
I have no doubt that Apple and others have looked at this and considered it as a possibility. There are likely even prototype systems based on this and other cooling tech.
 
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