I-Corps: Embedded Cooling

该 I-Corps 项目的技术具有更广泛的影响/商业潜力，其基础是一系列微流体冷却产品。该技术的潜力在于它对多种计算技术的积极影响，它可能会扩大处理频率的限制，从而扩大系统速度/性能。可以从该项目技术中受益的商业应用非常广泛，例如需要数据中心高性能计算加速的商业应用、人工智能领域的图形计算、自动驾驶交通、视频游戏硬件、数字货币（区块链）技术、增强和虚拟现实等。 I-Corps 客户发现活动还将对该项目的冷却技术的其他潜在市场提供有用的见解，确认其他行业是否有需求/兴趣，例如激光、聚光太阳能光伏发电和热电产品，以及在某种程度上使用液体冷却系统的许多潜在市场。该 I-Corps 项目的动机是采用一种由嵌入式微流体冷却层组成的技术，与当前的热硬件相比，该技术可显着增强散热能力，这是由于消除了微电子设备中常用的热界面和散热器的结果。通过金属接头将微流体冷却层粘合到硅芯片表面，直接控制热量的排出。由此产生的微冷却层取代了当前技术中使用的散热器，因为嵌入冷却层中的微结构具有适当的特征尺寸和布局，并通过工程歧管进行适当的流量分布，以实现有效的散热。该技术允许向计算核心输入更高的电压，从而提供解锁微处理单元时钟频率的能力，同时将设备温度保持在设计限制以下。在各种操作条件和制冷剂下对这些微流体冷却层进行的实验室实验表明，它们能够消除高达 500 W/cm2 的热通量；与当前商业、高端中央处理单元 (CPU) 和图形处理单元 (GPU) 的最大热通量相比，增加了 5 倍。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project's technology has its basis in a range of microfluidic cooling products. The potential of the technology is its positive impacts on several computing technologies where it may expand the limits of processing frequency and therefore system speed/performance. Commercial applications that can benefit from the project's technology are broad, such as those requiring the acceleration of high-performance computing in data centers, graphics computing in the fields of artificial intelligence, self-driving transportation, videogame hardware, digital currency (blockchain) technology, augmented and virtual reality, among others. The I-Corps customer discovery activities will also provide useful insights into other potential markets for this project's cooling technology, confirming if there is a need/interest by other industries, such as lasers, concentrated solar photovoltaics, and thermoelectric products, among many potential markets that use liquid-cooling systems at some level. This I-Corps project is motivated by a technology that consists of an embedded microfluidic cooling layer that offers significantly enhanced heat removal capabilities when compared with current thermal hardware -- this is as a result of eliminating the thermal interfaces and heat spreaders commonly used in microelectronic devices. The heat removal is directly managed by bonding the microfluidic cooling layer to the silicon chip surface through a metallic joint. The resulting micro-cooling layer replaces the need for the heat spreader used in current technologies since the microstructures embedded in the cooling layer have the appropriate feature sizes and layout with an appropriate flow distribution through engineered manifolds for effective heat dissipation. This technology provides the capability of unlocking the clock frequency on micro-processing units by allowing the input of higher voltages to the computing cores, while also keeping the device temperature below design limits. Laboratory experimentation with these microfluidic cooling layers under a wide variety of operating conditions and refrigerants has demonstrated capabilities for removing heat fluxes of up to 500 W/cm2; a 5x increase when compared with the current maximum heat fluxes of commercial, high-end central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.