Friday, July 15th 2011
New Sandia CPU Cooler Design Offers Fundamental Breakthrough in Heat Transfer
Sandia National Laboratories has developed a new technology with the potential to dramatically alter the air-cooling landscape in computing and microelectronics, and lab officials are now seeking licensees in the electronics chip cooling field to license and commercialize the device.
The "Sandia Cooler," also known as the "Air Bearing Heat Exchanger," is a novel, proprietary air-cooling invention developed by Sandia researcher Jeff Koplow, who was recently selected by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) to take part in the NAE's 17th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium.
Koplow said the Sandia Cooler technology, which is patent-pending, will significantly reduce the energy needed to cool the processor chips in data centers and large-scale computing environments. The yearly electricity bill paid by the information technology sector in the U.S. is currently on the order of seven billion dollars and continues to grow.
Dramatic improvements in cooling, other benefits
In a conventional CPU cooler, the heat transfer bottleneck is the boundary layer of "dead air" that clings to the cooling fins. With the Sandia Cooler, heat is efficiently transferred across a narrow air gap from a stationary base to a rotating structure. The normally stagnant boundary layer of air enveloping the cooling fins is subjected to a powerful centrifugal pumping effect, causing the boundary layer thickness to be reduced to ten times thinner than normal. This reduction enables a dramatic improvement in cooling performance within a much smaller package.
Additionally, the high speed rotation of the heat exchanger fins minimizes the problem of heat exchanger fouling. The way the redesigned cooling fins slice through the air greatly improves aerodynamic efficiency, which translates to extremely quiet operation. The Sandia Cooler's benefits have been verified by lab researchers on a proof-of-concept prototype approximately sized to cool computer CPUs. The technology, Koplow said, also shows great potential for personal computer applications.
Broader energy sector applications
The Sandia Cooler also offers benefits in other applications where thermal management and energy efficiency are important, particularly heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC). Koplow said that if Air Bearing Heat Exchanger technology proves amenable to size scaling, it has the potential to decrease overall electrical power consumption in the U.S. by more than seven percent.
Companies interested in licensing the Sandia Cooler are invited to review and respond to the solicitation through July 15. The solicitation can be found here. Although it is first focused on licensing opportunities in the field of electronics chip cooling, Sandia will soon establish a separate process for exploring partnering and/or licensing opportunities in other fields.
A technical white paper on the Sandia Cooler technology can be found here.
Sandia's work on the cooler technology was funded initially through internal investments. Follow-on funding is also being provided by the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
The "Sandia Cooler," also known as the "Air Bearing Heat Exchanger," is a novel, proprietary air-cooling invention developed by Sandia researcher Jeff Koplow, who was recently selected by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) to take part in the NAE's 17th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium.
Dramatic improvements in cooling, other benefits
In a conventional CPU cooler, the heat transfer bottleneck is the boundary layer of "dead air" that clings to the cooling fins. With the Sandia Cooler, heat is efficiently transferred across a narrow air gap from a stationary base to a rotating structure. The normally stagnant boundary layer of air enveloping the cooling fins is subjected to a powerful centrifugal pumping effect, causing the boundary layer thickness to be reduced to ten times thinner than normal. This reduction enables a dramatic improvement in cooling performance within a much smaller package.
Additionally, the high speed rotation of the heat exchanger fins minimizes the problem of heat exchanger fouling. The way the redesigned cooling fins slice through the air greatly improves aerodynamic efficiency, which translates to extremely quiet operation. The Sandia Cooler's benefits have been verified by lab researchers on a proof-of-concept prototype approximately sized to cool computer CPUs. The technology, Koplow said, also shows great potential for personal computer applications.
Broader energy sector applications
The Sandia Cooler also offers benefits in other applications where thermal management and energy efficiency are important, particularly heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC). Koplow said that if Air Bearing Heat Exchanger technology proves amenable to size scaling, it has the potential to decrease overall electrical power consumption in the U.S. by more than seven percent.
Companies interested in licensing the Sandia Cooler are invited to review and respond to the solicitation through July 15. The solicitation can be found here. Although it is first focused on licensing opportunities in the field of electronics chip cooling, Sandia will soon establish a separate process for exploring partnering and/or licensing opportunities in other fields.
A technical white paper on the Sandia Cooler technology can be found here.
Sandia's work on the cooler technology was funded initially through internal investments. Follow-on funding is also being provided by the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
42 Comments on New Sandia CPU Cooler Design Offers Fundamental Breakthrough in Heat Transfer
[INDENT]One important point about the air bearing is that the ~0.03 mm air gap is not maintained by using extremely tight mechanical tolerances. Much like an air hockey puck on an air hockey table, or a hard disk read/write head, the air gap distance is self-regulating. If the air gap distance increases, the air pressure in the gap region drops, which causes the air gap distance to decrease. This built in negative feedback provides excellent mechanical stability and an extremely stiff effective spring constant (important for ruggedness). Unlike an air hockey table, which relies on gravity to counter-balance the pressure force acting on the puck, the air-bearing cooler can be mounted in an arbitrary orientation (e.g., up-side-down, sideways etc.). And unlike a computer disk drive, incidental mechanical contact between the two air bearing surfaces does not damage either surface. [/INDENT]
Pretty much what I imagined in my head. That tight tolerance is held via air pressure, not extremely tight machining specifications. Also, about losing fingers and the like, covering the outward facing blades of the fan wouldn't harm the efficiency of the fan. One would expect a production model to be covered in a fancy plastic shroud akin to the blower style GPU coolers of today.
But it is an interesting concept. But I think its somewhat limited in physical size.
Congrats Sandia finally intelligent life out there.
Will this be squashed by the corporates like so many others or will they actually use this and make money off of it.
They can make the heatsink and fins one solid block and then have a old school rotational fan on top and this fan+fins area needs a cover with center hole to suck and force the air into the fins and out the side in between the fins and the cover.
This way a small part of the fan is recessed and exposed but works more like a vacuum cleaner and vented in the same side fins as is current. The there is no need for a sharp dangerous rotor / spinning piece of metal or small air gaps that possibly reduces the cooling effect.
Also mounting it and putting pressure on the fin area might effect the spacing and cause a wobble / vibrations.
the closer the gap gets the higher the air pressure becomes between the 2 surfaces forcing them back into an centred alignment no mater how hot the the base plate or spinning finned surface becomes, the principal is the same as used in HDD's to maintain the gap between R/W head and spinning platter
there objective is to reduce the power required to cool aswell as to keep it as quiet as possible whilst maintaining the high efficiency of a large FFHS ( fin fan heat sink) with high speed noisy fan and keep it small as required in the DARPA specifications