The struggle to deal with the heat generated from our ever-advancing processor designs is always a difficult challenge leading to big heatsinks, big fans and the inevitable noise that stems from that. The problem is even greater in laptops, where a machine placed on your lap during use can lead to some undesirable injuries.
Researchers at Purdue University may have come up with an answer to our laptop heat woes, however. They have been working to miniaturise a refrigeration system to the point where it becomes feasible to place it inside a PC or laptop.
The specific type they are working on is called vapor-compression refrigeration. Anyone who has air conditioning in their offices probably has vapor-compression technology in those units. They consist of 4 main parts:
- Expansion valve
The workings of this type of system are best described by the Wikipedia image reproduced below:
Even though this and other refrigeration systems have been around for a number of years, they have not been used in devices such as laptops due to problems with miniaturising the different parts, in particular the compressor.
The researchers believe they have solved that problem by managing to create a mini-compressor using a method called electrostatic diaphragm compression. This system uses very thin, elastic layers of polymide plastic, which are coated in metal making them electrically conductive. When electricity is supplied to the unit the elastic polymide moves back and fourth like a pump.
Overcoming this hurdle has given the researchers confidence the refrigeration can now be made small enough to fit inside a laptop. The main advantage of using such a system is the fact that much greater levels of heat can be dealt with allowing for more powerful, or potentially more processors, to be housed within the same unit.
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This is great news for laptop users as it potentially means substantially less heat being emitted from your machine. It also means we could get much more powerful laptops coming to market, but at the expense of battery life.
I would be interested to know how much power such a refrigeration system requires and whether it is more than conventional heatsink and fan units. I suspect it will be, but the benefits may be enough to make their use feasible anyway.
This research reminded me of the first Dreamcast game console units that came to market, which actually used a liquid cooling solution. But that was soon replaced with standard heatsink and fan cooling in 2nd-generation units, I believe in an attempt to save money on manufacturing costs. Refrigeration-cooled laptops will surely also carry a premium price, at least to begin with.