Microchip Overheating Means Microwarming

One of the most serious challenges to the progress of advanced computing is the overheating created by the very transistors that power today’s digital electronics. At Waytronx, we refer to the performance-limiting overheating threatening to slow the advancement of Moore's Law as microwarming.

Microwarming impacts the cost and performance of CPUs, graphics, memory, computer systems and even data centers.

The costs and complexity of cooling techniques are setting overall system performance limits that negate many of the gains in successive generations of high-end processors and multiprocessors. This takes a bite out the power of  Moore’s Law, impacting the growth opportunities for a multitude of markets -- from high-sped games to high-stakes government applications. 

In fact, advanced chips produce so much heat that, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Lee Gomes, “Intel  worries more about improving energy efficiency than performance.” Further, Gomes says, “(Gordon) Moore admits that the limitations of power consumption caught him, as well as the industry, by surprise.” (“Even an Intel Founder Can Still Be Impressed”, WSJ, 10/10/07)

Microwarming Means Macro Issues

The issue of imbalance between the heat generated by today’s leading edge processors and yesterday’s outdated cooling solutions has turned into an industry-critical challenge. In fact, as components in the micro electronics industry run at higher and higher speeds with ever-increased computing capacity and density between components, the primary gating factor to the performance predicted by Moore’s Law is thermal management. Microwarming causes:

• Increased system bottlenecks
• Decreased performance at the chip levels
• Decreased system reliability
• Overheating

Join the Ecology and help us solve the issue of microwarming.