Moore’s Law and Thermal Management

Join engineers, hardware designers, and architects on Wednesday October 7th, 2015 at 1:30 pm (EDT) at Thermal Live™ for an online 45-minute roundtable discussion on the merits of passive fan assists, water cooling, and variable assist active cooling as it pertains to high density electronics.

Thermal Live™ is a brand new concept in education and networking in thermal management. It’s a FREE, 3-day online event for electronics and mechanical engineers to learn the latest in thermal management techniques and topics. Produced by Electronics Cooling® magazine, and launching in October 2015 for the first time, Thermal Live™ features webinars, roundtables, whitepapers, and videos……at no cost to attend.

Moderated by Chris Caylor, technical director here at Phononic and leader in advanced thermoelectric materials systems, device integration, and compound semiconductors, the roundtable discussion will focus on the pros and cons of different approaches to electronics cooling and the impact on system performance from component temperature control, form factors, power consumption and cost trade-offs. Join us and gain an understanding of the most recent advances in electronics cooling, including the ability to use active heat pumps based on thermoelectric devices, to provide superior cooling performance to minimize capital and operational costs.

Moore’s Law, Cooling and What You Need to Know about It?

Moore’s law, says “the number of transistors packed in an Integrated Circuit doubles approximately every 2 years,” resulting in computation speed doubling every 2 years. As we have seen, this is generally accomplished by the development of CPUs with increased density and included components (hard drives, video cards, and other components) which simultaneously increases heat outputs and reduces the space available for heat removal.

As the amount of space available for cooling solutions shrinks, the cost and/or power used to move the heat from the components to the outside world becomes critical creating a greater need for cooling innovations. Conventional, approaches to thermal management are ill-equipped to meet the thermal demands of today’s most advanced technology designs. Current solutions include: heat sinks, fans, vapor chambers, heat pipes, water, and liquid immersion.

Phononic’s Innovative Cooling Solutions

The biggest challenge with the typical passive heat exchanger is the fact that these solutions depend on local ambient conditions. The problems outlined above are dealt with by larger heat sinks, higher fin density, and more air flow with faster (and louder) fans. The good news: There is a better way to deal with high heat densities in compact electronic systems, using active cooling components enables the designer to maximize performance and space savings and potentially reduce the size of the overall heat reject system.

At Phononic we’ve rethought the use of active cooling components in an intelligent way using SilverCore™ our solid state system which allows engineers and designers to mitigate the size, noise level, and cost of the thermal systems—especially when newly configured systems allow for better thermal control and permit the use of the electronic components in a wider array of environments and packaging.

Phononic technology adds active devices that provide precise cooling and heating options that enable the intelligent design of thermal systems and provide accurate temperature control while minimizing penalties like the reduce overall electrical power need.