The battle to find new ways to cool microelectronics is on. Waste heat dissipated
from computer processors is the bane of the electronics industry. Intel's
recent cancellation of a 4-gigahertz Pentium 4 processor that might have
turned PCs into toaster ovens was a sign that they may be losing the battle.
Intel isn't the only manufacturer having problems. Apple Computer added
expensive liquid-cooling systems to its G5 computers last year to chill
their IBM processors. Graphics and HDTV image processors are running so
hot that they soon may require similar cooling strategies. This problem
is an old one, caused by increasing numbers of circuits being packed into
chips. But as circuit dimensions shrink into the nano realm, transistors
and capacitors are leaking increasing amounts of electrons, causing the
chips to both heat up and consume more power.
