According to Techworld, IBM is working on a new type of cooling for computer chips. It's a rather interesting design that's based on water cooling. This use of water, though, has a twist. Instead of a bulky, massive radiator, reservoir, water block, and pump, the IBM device has only nozzles. It has 50,000 of them, actually. Each micronozzle is about 40 microns wide and sprays water directly on to the chip. There is no heat spreader in this design. The water then absorbs heat and is recollected for further use. The amount of water is miniscule, so upkeep is much less than conventional water cooling, and the possibility of spills is vastly reduced.

As far as the actual implications of this technology, from our standpoint it seems a bit gimmicky, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. We've reached our thermal limits on every-day air cooling. It just doesn't work anymore to keep the highest-end chips cool, or else we would have seen the FX-70 months ago. Hopefully the geniuses at IBM will come up with something, and we'll see if this is it.

Techworld