Future of Engineering

Researchers at Purdue have put their minds together to create tiny refrigerators. This tiny little thing isn't going to store your foodstuff. Instead it's getting inside a computer to keep it cool.

Conventional methods:

In most computers, fans circulate air through finned devices called heat sinks attached to computer chips. And they do a pretty good job of keeping electronic components cool. But when a computer generates too much heat, liquid cooling, also known as water cooling has been looked upon as a good solution.

Indian American Suresh Garimella, of Purdue University takes it one step further. He believes that tiny fridges will be placed in future computers to keep it cool.

How it works:
The researchers developed an analytical model for designing tiny compressors that pump refrigerants using penny-size diaphragms and validated the model with experimental data. The elastic membranes are made of ultra-thin sheets of a plastic called polyimide and coated with an electrically conducting metallic layer. The metal layer allows the diaphragm to be moved back and forth to produce a pumping action using electrical charges, or "electrostatic diaphragm compression."

Why miniature refrigeration?
Trends suggest that future computer chips will generate 10 times more heat than today's microprocessors. So it makes sense to find ways to increase the efficiency of the machine.

Refrigeration is doubly efficient because it can cool the chips below the surrounding temperature which is not possible with conventional methods.

Hope this cool computer finds its way to the shelves soon.

Source - Purdue University
Photo Credit - Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger

Labels: Computer-Science, Engineering-USA

Shirley Ann Jackson, the 2004 president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute since 1999was quoted by Thomas Friedman in his book "The World is Flat", as follows: "The sky is not falling, nothing horrible is going to happen today" says Jackson. "The U.S. is still the leading engine for innovation in the world. It has the best graduate programs, the best scientific infrastructure, and the capital markets to exploit it. But there is a quiet crisis in U.S. science and technology that we have to wake up to. The U.S. today is in a truly global environment, and those competitor countries are not only wide awake, they are running a marathon while we are running sprints. If left unchecked, this could challenge our preeminence and capacity to innovate."

A roadmap project on the future of engineering in the U.S. is coming pretty much to the same conclusion.

Full analysis from here

Labels: Engineering-USA

"The U.S. is still the leading engine for innovation in the world. It has the best graduate programs, the best scientific infrastructure, and the capital markets to exploit it. But there is a quiet crisis in U.S. science and technology that we have to wake up to. The U.S. today is in a truly global environment, and those competitor countries are not only wide awake, they are running a marathon while we are running sprints. If left unchecked, this could challenge our preeminence and capacity to innovate." A roadmap project on the future of engineering in the U.S. is coming pretty much to the same conclusion.

Interesting article...full content here

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The quiet crisis - the future of U.S. engineering, from nanotechnology to civil infrastructure

Labels: Engineering-USA