IBM researchers have developed a new technology for cooling chips

IBM's heat conduction interface technology, according to the researchers, allows doubling of heat dissipation compared to existing methods? At the same time, IBM laboratories are also examining cooling using water

IBM researchers have announced that they have developed a new method to improve the cooling process of computer chips, which bears the name "heat conduction interface technology" and enables the doubling of heat dissipation compared to existing methods, according to them.

IBM's new approach focuses on the interface point between the hot chip and the various cooling components used today to dissipate the heat. Usually, special and flexible bonding materials are used, in order to ensure that the chip can thermally expand while maintaining continuous contact with the cooling unit. The adhesive layer will be as thin as possible, in order to ensure efficient heat conduction. However, compressing this layer to too thin dimensions and applying pressure to the chip, may cause damage or even break the chip. The technology developed at IBM makes it possible to produce a "protective cap" for the chip, the face of which is designed in the form of branching channels similar to the branching of branches from the trunk of a tree. These branching patterns are designed so that when pressure is applied to the material, it spreads evenly, and the pressure remains uniform across the entire surface of the chip. In this way, it is possible to ensure the uniformity of the interface layer - at a pressure with half the power used today, and with ten times better heat conduction qualities.

IBM stated that "the prototype presented by IBM scientists is part of a comprehensive study designed to serve the next generations of chips and computer systems. The bottleneck in the field of cooling was created due to the need for more powerful chips - and the problem of heat is increasingly being discovered as one of the main obstacles on the way to future systems. High-performance chips that are integrated into computer systems today produce 100 watts per square centimeter - ten times more than a normal heating plate, which is used at home. Future chips may reach an even greater heat density, and if they are not cooled properly they may approach the typical temperatures before the sun - about 6,000 degrees Celsius."

The existing cooling technologies, which are usually based on the forced flow of air, using a fan, over heat spreaders made of fins that constitute tiny "cooling towers", have actually reached the limit of their capabilities already in the current generation of electronic products. The energy currently invested in cooling tasks is getting closer to that required for calculation tasks - which means a doubling of the electricity budget required to operate the computer.

IBM scientists in laboratories in Zurich are examining the concept of branching channels also in water cooling systems. In this technology, water is injected onto the back of the chip and pumped out in a completely closed system, with the help of up to 50,000 tiny nozzles. The return of the water is carried out in a branched and complex system - where the completely closed structure of the unit prevents any fear of the coolant leaking into the electronic environment of the chip. The developers at IBM found a way to directly glue the cooling component to the surface of the chip, without the buffering adhesive interface layer, which is required today, and which reduces the heat conduction capacity.

The IBM development team has already demonstrated cooling with a power of up to 370 watts per square centimeter, using water as the coolant. This cooling capacity is six times higher than that possible with air cooling, the researchers say, and it is able to handle 75 watts per square meter.

IBM has developed a technology that translates radio and television broadcasts in Arabic into English

Scientists at IBM have developed a new technology that translates television and radio broadcasts in Arabic into the English language, in an almost instantaneous process. The system receives and analyzes the voices of the speakers in Arabic television and radio broadcasts and translates the words into English text. The received text file goes through an open process using the CriticalTV software developed by the Critical Mention company - which leased the system from IBM - in a process that ultimately allows for a real-time search of the contents broadcast on the Arabic media tools and receiving an immediate notification when an identification of a requested term is received.

As part of the agreement between the two companies, IBM will continue to develop its translation system, including the possibility of supporting additional languages ​​in the future. The system combines three core technologies: a search system, speech-to-text conversion and machine translation based on statistical tools. When the user selects a news source and a video segment, for example, the text spoken in a foreign language is translated and converted into written text in English. In order to provide the best results, the system uses a statistical model derived from the database of the translated materials of the simultaneous translators working at the United Nations. Thus, the software "knows" how to compare an original word against the translated one - as well as sequences of words and complete sentences, which are compared against the UN simultaneous translation database.

Critical Mention's customer list includes business companies, government bodies, public relations companies and various organizations, who need ongoing real-time information about the content broadcast in the various media.