2nd March 2008 by Giles Smith
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It’s actually a new implementation of an old discovery. MSI’s Air Power Cooler uses the energy inherent in the expansion of air as it warms up to drive a fan.
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As the CPU gets hot, it causes air in a piston to expand. That pushes out the piston rod, which turns the fan rotor, pulling air over a heatpipe-fed heatsink. The heatsing helps cool the piston, so the air inside becomes more dense, pulling the piston rod back to its original position.
It’s a mechanism called the Stirling Engine, named after Scottish engineer Robert Stirling, who described it in 1816, though the principles on which his machine were based were uncovered in the 17th Century.
This is pretty cool, and could be very useful in the future, as components and chips get smaller, they get hotter. Using the energy that is lost as heat to cool increases cooling efficiency dramatically.
Find out more about the Stirling Engine.
Its a shame that it is a bit big to fit onto more compact machines, but fits fine into the average desktop. MSI claim that 70% of the energy lost as heat from your CPU is transferred to the fan which will disipate the other 30%. It’s not totally efficient as it requires a kick start but it still won’t use a drop of electricity…
Tags: cooling, CPU, mobo, msi, pc, stirling engine
Categories: IT, Tech & Internet •
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27th November 2007 by Giles Smith
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Intel’s first next processors based on its next-generation ‘Nehalem’ architecture are due to appear a year from now, in Q4 2008. But the really interesting models will arrive during the first half of 2009: desktop and mobile CPUs with integrated graphics cores.
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Lynnfield is a quad-core part, again with HT to allow it to operate as eight cores, and with 8MB of L2. It too supports DDR 3, but only in a dual-channel configuration, the report indicates. The CPU’s on-board PCI Express controller allows it to link directly to a x16 graphics card, while its I/O chip, ‘Ibexpeak’, connects by DMI (Direct Media Interface).
The same architecture will be used by ‘Cleaksfield/Clarksfield’ – there’s some confusion over the name – the Nehalem-era mainstream quad-core part. However, this chip uses a 989-pin rPGA interconnect.
So too wil ‘Auburndale’, while is said to be a mobile chip, implying that Cleaksfield/Clarksfield is too. Auburndale is a dual-core product – HyperThreading makes it appear as a quad-core chip to the operating system – with 4MB of L2 and dual-channel DDR 3 support.
Like Cleaksfield/Clarksfield it will use PCI Express as its system bus to connect to a discrete GPU. But this will be optional: Auburndale will sport an integrated GPU of its own, along with a directly connected video memory buffer.
I can’t wait! Faster data rates between CPU and GPU are required for better performance so putting the GPU right next to the CPU should open a few doors.
Tags: CPU, GPU, Intel, Lynnfield, PCI Express, quad-core
Categories: IT, Tech & Internet •
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