IDF Fall 2004: Intel Technology Showcase

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SprayCool Solutions was on hand showing some of their “spray” products. The above left image was showing the live demonstration and was one of the more impressive things on display on the show floor. This type of sealed cooling will allow companies to run high performance systems without having to install air-conditioning or purification, which in the long run will reducing installation overhead and operating costs. The also were showing some SprayCool Rack Mount Enclosures that were using low profile water blocks that would fit in 1U rack mount enclosures.

Asia Vital Components CO., LTD was showing many BTX cooling solutions and had one BTX chassis on display. Their Balanced Technology Extended (BTX) heat sink fan units looked more like what we have been seeing for many months. Nothing new here from AVC since we last saw them over in Taiwan for Computex 2004.

Intel teamed up with Chaun Choung Technology Corp. (CCI), to help develop a cooling solution to handle the socket 775 platforms and continues to work with them today on new designs. CCI is the company that came up with the Intel Radial Curved Bifurcated Fin Heatsink (or RCBFH-3 Reference Design) that we have all seen with the launch of retail Socket T processors. The had several interesting heat sink designs being displayed, but their BTX design looks the most interesting. The solid copper heatsink has a solid base and different sized heat sink “cooling towers” that are used to pull heat away from the processor. CCI also showed us the inside of some current heat pipes that are used on laptops. The level of detail is amazing inside them! There are small “capillaries” on the tubes that help increase the internal surface area and while the design is good for now CCI is planning on making some advances in the design. All this is thanks to Intel, as they have given them funding to do their research. You can safely bet that some in China are hard at work using CAD Design Software to design better heat pipes.

When walking past the Elpida booth we saw these modules laying out in the open. After picking them up and taking a good look at them we found that they are the pre-production Elpida FB-DIMM samples. The large buffer chipset in the middle is what really makes the module stand out from current DDR2 modules. After asking the memory group about the buffer chip we found out that the chip would put out 3.5-4w when it comes to power dissipation per buffer chip. This chip will also help control the thermal management of the entire module. Meaning it can throttle each DIMM down independently if one gets too hot our is running out of specifications. The FB-DIMM’s are for server applications only, so if you are hoping for something like this on the desktop side you are out of luck.

As with all good things the show must come to an end for now, but we will be back next year!