Thermal Performance Challenges
The insatiable demand for higher performance processors has lead to a steady escalation in power consumption across all the market segments.
The first topic of renewal is the base of system reliability.
There are two major reasons to maintain the operating temperature of a device at a certain level.
1. It is a well-known fact that the reliability of circuits (transistors) is exponentially dependent on the operating temperature of the junction. As such, small differences in operating temperature (order of 10–15oC) can result in a ~2X difference in the lifespan of the devices.
2. The other factor is the speed of the microprocessor. At lower operating temperatures, due to reduced gate delay, microprocessors can operate at higher speeds.
Therefore，management of the design and technology elements to meet the individual thermal-resistance budgets.
Air cooling is the most widespread means of system-level cooling in desktop, workstation, and server segments. One or more system fans is employed to move the air within the chassis.
The next topic of discussion is the side effects and intrinsic attenuation of the fans in the lifespan.
However, any fans is that they often get noise and dust just before failing, as well as the fans can seize up without your knowing it potentially leading to failure of the whole system. The fans has the intrinsic attenuation in the lifespan.
Apparently，management of the design to reduced the amount of the fans as less as possible.No moving parts mean it is maintenance free.
At the same time, there are many people who live under the traditional ideas that it is an inevitable result and there is no way to avoid it.
Is there a solution that kill two birds with one stone?
One bird is the lower the thermal resistance budgets, another bird is a “fanless” cooler.
Vicious Circle
All tricks(technology) have been exhausted
From a purely technical standpoint, the lower the thermal resistance budgets, the more challenging the thermal design, and the higher the power capacity of the design. Additional metrics such as the volumetrics of a system and cost budgets add to the complexity and challenges of thermal design.
