Future laptops to be cooled with oil, magnets

Is your processor running too fast, too cool, and using too little power? Neither is mine. As Moore’s Law continues to march towards ever-increasing chip densities, semiconductor heat and power consumption have become the limiting factors in microprocessor development. With the limits of air-cooling already being tested, and with water-cooling still seen as a fringe technology by many, how is all that heat going to get dissipated? If you’re a researcher at the University of Tokyo, you do it with pipes, magnets, and a healthy dollop of “nano-oil.”

The novel cooling device uses oil impregnated with metallic nanoparticles as the heat transfer medium. The oil absorbs heat from a hot CPU and, with the aid of a magnet, naturally flows to a cooler region–in this case, a heat exchanger. The heat is removed either via radiating or forced air cooling, and the now-cool fluid naturally flows back to the CPU.

Dispensing with pumps makes the system utterly reliable as well as smaller, quieter, cheaper, and more power-efficient than other technologies like heatpipes. Such advantages look mighty tasty indeed to manufacturers wedging hot chips into cramped environments like laptops.