Lasers could be used to cool CPUs say UW researchers

[HEXUS]

Infrared laser used for cooling represents a "major breakthrough".

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[s32ialx]

Sweet, I would love to see this get adapted in to the PC world imagine that fibre networks, audio and then laser cooling much love for light.

We could make some pretty neat lighting effects with all that light, even have fibre cables that put off a small luminescence etc.

[Haxorus]

Yeah i agree with s32ialx, that will look awesome! I wonder if they're harmful if you try and look into the case full of lasers everywhere lol

[HavoCnMe]

Can't wait for the day we can go and pick up a CoolerMaster 414 Laser Heatsink for the ole pc.

[ceejays88]

Laser heatsink for my pentium 4 woo. Will get a few more years out of it then haha

[Luke7]

Using lasers to cool isn't new... I was watching a demonstration of lasers being used to cool particles (I believe it was potassium) to near absolute zero the other day.

[aidanjt]

Yeah cooling something very macro with active heat generation like a CPU is a whole different ballgame from cooling a solitary atom. A PC cooling laser would be impractically large, consume way more power, and be a massive fire hazard. Don't ever expect something like this in a consumer PC.

[lumireleon]

ohhhhhhh by the time the come to the market CPUs will not need coolers they will be like your smartphone, overclocking it to 7.0GHZ and the temperature is like 40 degrees...........AWESOME!!

[RAJA666]

Will it change the molecular structure of the material it cooled?

I see the day when they cool this scorching heat in Perth where I live, imagining creating ondemand virtual refrigerator-in-the-sky!!

[Arthoin]

I kinda don't believe the whole thing, but I also like to see lasers do cool stuff, so I wish it was true.

[aidanjt]

Will it change the molecular structure of the material it cooled?

Not particularly, laser cooling methods tend to emulate the means by which atoms cool off by bumping against each other.

[jginnane]

There is very precise wording used in this article, although it is a general, non-technical one. The test was done on a very small particle of a substance "common in lasers". The glow given off, when excited by the laser, "released more energy than it took in".

This would mean (1) the bulk of the chip would need to be constructed of this material, and (2) a way would still be needed to shunt this released energy away from the chip. In other words, each pulse of the laser would reduce the net energy held by the target material to the surrounding environment. A different process would be needed to evacuate the released heat from the environment, and then the process could be repeated.

The biggest question is related to the efficiency of the entire operation, since the laser itself generates a lot of heat. All this seems to be doing is evacuating it from one place to another.

For more information (that's not too technical), see the wiki on "Laser" at --

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser