The more powerful a computer, or specifically a processing chip, the more heat it will produce, due to the higher power consumption requirements. This is an issue that seems to be plaguing many high-performance processing chip manufacturers, especially Intel.
At their recent Foundry Direct Connect event, Intel Foundry showed off several experiments being conducted to find more efficient ways to cool processing chips.
Among the experiments being conducted is using an IHS (integrated heat spreader), or an aluminum heat spreader that conducts heat away from the silicon and installing liquid microchannels made of copper to flow liquid coolant that helps cool the silicon components inside the processing chip.
The concept of using liquid coolant to cool processing chips is not new, but it is very rare to see any company using the heat spreader as a channel to directly cool the silicon components.
Intel says that this cooling method can dissipate up to 1000 Watts of heat using only standard liquid cooling, and has been experimented with using Intel Core Ultra processor chips and Intel Xeon server chips.
For now, Intel says that this technology is still in the testing phase, and there is no set time frame, or if it will be used in future Intel products. It is seen as one of Intel's ways of trying to solve their CPU cooling problems, and it may be some time before it is widely introduced.