Take A Lab Tour Of This Solid-State Cooling Tech

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hey internet you were super excited to  see the airjet at CES the good news is   we are here at four systems in San  Jose California where Dr sachu Matt   hathapati is going to give us a lab tour  our pleasure Gordon welcome to floor systems I think probably what people of the  internet want to know though is can   we actually saw one of these open and  look inside are you ready to do that yet   not quite yet you know this is a new product we're  just introducing into the market and we built this   using a lot of proprietary design techniques and  materials and so we're not quite ready to open the   kimono yet okay but I can share with you a high  level uh cross-section to give you an idea about   how it works okay I think that's good because it's  really good to to help me understand it because I   what exactly is it doing sure well here's a little  graphic GIF that gives you the idea you know it's   a 2.8 millimeter thick a jet mini as well as Pro  they're both 2.8 millimeters thick and that's   conceptually what the cross section looks like and  what it does you know you basically have uh two   sections inside the top is a cavity with vibrating  membranes in it and what it does is when the   membranes are vibrating they pull F through the  vents at the top and then that air is pushed down   at the bottom of that cavity at very high  velocities velocity is reaching up to 200   kilometers per hour or 120 miles an hour and  those Jets of air they're pulsating Jets of air   are impinging on the copper heat spreader at  the bottom of their jet and that's where the   heat extraction is happening so the the principle  is that you would attach this copper heat spreader   to the hot surface so the copper heat spreader  gets as hot as the surface you're trying to cool   and then when you turn the edge it on these  membranes vibrate suck in air through the top the   air that's pulled in is going through the cavity  and hitting the copper heat spreader as pulsating   Jets and using a principle called jet impingement  we are able to extract heat with high efficiency   from the copper heat spreader and then the hot  air exits through a spout at the left and the air   that is exiting is saturated with heat which means  that the exit air temperature is the same as the   temperature of the copper heat spreader so it's  a highly efficient way of heating removing Heat   and so we are able to maximize the amount of heat  you can remove for the amount of air that is going   through the chip one of the big questions that  came out of the demos at CES was concerns about   dust at CES you actually said though the air jet  actually is better for dust control in devices   how exactly does that work the way it works is you  know you you have two ways it can work one you can   put a dust guard on the inlet vents of the device  so that any air that actually enters the device   is already fitted for dust so dust doesn't enter  the device at all and therefore the device entire   device is dust proof okay an alternative way of  handling it would be that you can actually put   the dust guard directly as part of the airjet  mini so you can actually place the dust guard   directly on the airjet mini and if you did that  then if air comes in then it is sucked into the   air jet because of the high back pressure without  any loss of flow into their jet okay so you know   this membrane how are you able to because how are  you able to get the air to pass through that is it   similar to like Gore-Tex in a way with water yes  it is you know this basically is dust proof and   waterproof material so we've selected a specific  material that actually filters out all dust that's   less than one micron in diameter so micro dust  can still go through but other than that all   the dust is filtered out by this dust guard  material and micro dust doesn't really impact   the performance of The Edge itself just as air  comes in gets saturated with heat and is ejected   out that dust just passes through as well along  with the air okay so anything there's more than   one micron is filtered out is not entering the  chip and anything that is smaller than a micron   will just gets flushed out along with the air so  and that's actually what we're going to see tested   here we do extensive product and reliability  testing in our Labs how all your manufacturing   Fab is actually in Taiwan but the entire design  of the product and also the life cycle testing   in order to ensure that product is reliable  is done here so you you're here in our r d   product reliability testing lab and one of the  tests we do is using dust and here's a chamber and   you can see that you know we've got fine powder  and a bunch of air jet Minis that are running   and we have a fan that blows the air continuously  and we run this non-stop for 10 days in a highly   dust-filled chamber and we make sure that the  at the end of the 10 days there's less than   five percent degradation in performance of the  airjet so we do extensive testing of All Sorts in   order to make sure that the product is reliable  and as a five year lifetime you know one of the   misconceptions I think that was out there is  that this this simply is a fan this is like a   fancy way to make a fan you know is it a fan or  is it not a fan it's definitely most definitely   not a fan we are using solid state to move it but  it is not just moving air it's actually using the   air to remove heat so it's a self-contained heat  removing active cooling chip sure it uses moving   air but it uses the air most efficiently and the  heat transfer is happening inside the chip itself   not outside the chip so it's a air-based active  cooling chip but it's it's a heat removing chip   it's not a heat it's not a air moving chip right  you wouldn't use this to blow into basically a   that would be a waste of the capabilities of  this chip I mean we are not trying to replace   a ceiling fan we are trying to improve the  thermal performance of computing devices so   for that reason this is something that has been  custom built for heat removal active heat removal   unlike a fan which has been repurposed  for removing heat in a Computing device   which is not the original reason why fans  were invented fans were invented to Glow air   on a hot Summer's evening right and they've been  repurposed for heat removal so we didn't have to   do any of that we built this from scratch as  an active heat removing chip so Sasha can you   explain what this test is doing right now what  you have here is called an htho chamber which   is high temperature high humidity operation we  put air Jets inside and we power them on and we   leave them in there for 10 days Non-Stop and in  those 10 days the temperature inside the chamber   keeps cycling between 55 degrees C and negative  10 degrees C and the humidity is cycled between   95 percent relative humidity and zero so there's  constant changes in temperature and humidity   inside the chamber and that's happening non-stop  for 10 days while the engine is running so this   is called an accelerated lifetime test profile  and we do that and make sure that once again   before and after less than five percent  degradation in the capability of their   jet mini chip uh as a result of the accelerated  life test and this is to simulate it working in   a really a harsh environment I guess right not  just that it's actually simulating a longer life   so reliability is a very interesting science so  they come up with these test criteria that give   you very high confidence that if it has been  able to perform in this type of situation for   10 days then that means that you will have  several years of Lifetime normal operation   so there are battery of tests like this one we  do dust was one excellent lifetime testing is   on one and then we also run a test flat out  for two thousand hours non-stop to make sure   that there's no degradation in performance so  it's a combination of all these tests that we   do that ensures that we are confident that  the product we're shipping can work uh in in   a product in a device for five years how can this  be solid state if there's a moving membrane inside well you know I think that people misunderstand  what solid state means solid state doesn't mean   there's nothing moving it just means that it is  about how you create that movement if you're using   a electric motor to create the movement then it's  not solid state if you're using materials that   don't have moving Parts in them in order to create  your the motion then it's solid state like for   example if you have a sensor like an accelerometer  or a gyroscope it's solid state but there is   motion in it and as you as you know you know  quartz clocks are solid state but they do have   moving Parts in them so moving Parts doesn't mean  it's not solid state it's about how you create   that motion that determines whether something is  solid state or not okay good good one because I   I really that was what a lot of people really were  were wondering but but that's semantics yeah it is   semantics I have another question about the shape  of this too because I notice at the end of it it   actually necks down what's the reason for making  it neck down at the end of it ah so so if you see   the construction of the air jet you're absolutely  right at the tip of this chip we have the spout   which is the exit for the hot air and we want  the hot air to exit fast and exit in a laminar   fashion so that it is able to move out quickly and  also as it comes out of the chip it entrains cool   air which means that the hot air gets diffused uh  into the ambient air very quickly so even though   there's a lot of hot air coming out of this with  very high temperature even if you put your finger   a millimeter away you're not going to feel the  heat Because by the time it has traveled that   much distance it has already mixed with cooler  so in order to make sure that we get the right   um affect uh in terms of diffusion of the hot air  into the ambient air we've designed this part in   such a manner that you know it's narrow and so  the air comes out fast uh there's also another   reason obviously you know you want this exit to  be as small as possible so that the exit went in   the device that this goes into can be really small  and most notebook manufacturers wouldn't want to   have a a a gap in their form factor that is more  than one millimeter in width so this meets that   spec okay just makes it smaller and then also  increases the velocity so then you have this   entrainment of air okay so essentially what are  we seeing on the screen here this is pretty cool   this is a schlitter image of an airjet mini in  action so what you see here is the LZ mini and   as it cools the processor the air picks up heat  and what's coming out is the exhaust air out of   the airjet mini through the spout and as the air  is coming out it's hot so it is at a different   density compared to this air around it and so  in a schlitter image you're able to use a light   diffraction and you can actually dynamically  capture the differences in air density so as   a result you're able to see the hot air coming out  of the airjet mini if I put a fan here what would   I see you don't see anything because there is no  difference in the temperature or the air density   because fan itself is only an air moving device  you can't capture air movement using schlieren   unless there is a temperature difference so  that I think actually comprehensively proves   that aged is not just an air moving device it's a  heat removal device it's an active heat removing   chip that uses air so cool air goes into the chip  and hot air comes out and what you're seeing here   is the hot air coming out yeah and that to me that  like a lot of the misconceptions I think of airjet   you seemed like because people thought it was  just a fancy fan but it isn't no no this is a   complete heat removing active cooling chip it's  a complete heat removing system in a chip where   it just uses air no doubt so ambient cool air goes  in and hot air comes out and the heat exchange is   happening inside the chip to the air and the air  that comes out is saturated with heat because if   you recall we talked about jet impingement so  that's a very efficient way of heat transfer so   the air that's coming out is essentially at the  same temperature as the processor or the copper   heat spreader if you will at the bottom of the air  jet chip and that's what you're seeing here and   there's a couple principles there that uh you know  I don't understand what does jet impingement means   so Jade impingement is just a technique where if  you have moving air moving air is very good at   removing Heat from a hot surface but how well it  removes Heat depends on how fast the air is moving   if you keep increasing the speed of air then  you will be able to remove more heat for the   same volume of air as well if the air is directed  vertically towards the hot surface it removes more   heat than if it is just blowing over a hot surface  so now you take those two principles together you   create these Jets Affair which are traveling at  you know as I said up to 200 kilometers per hour   and those Jets of air are impinging on the hot  surface perpendicularly okay then they are much   more efficient at heat removal than air that is  just blowing at a low velocity horizontally over   a hot surface he says you so what's happening  right here now well this is another of the   reliability test we do on their jet this one's  a long lifetime test now you've seen the high   humidity high temperature chamber and you've seen  the dust a third one is you know just running it   flat out and you know in this test we run the air  jet for 2000 hours continuously and that's about   three months of continuous operation and we once  again make sure that the performance of the chip   has degraded if any less than five percent after  the 2000 hour test and that has to be true of 100   of the devices and this these look like scales  these aren't scales now these are hot plates   so we are emulating the performance of The Edge  yet inside a notebook for example by putting the   edge yet on top of a hot plate and it's at 85c  which is essentially what the die temperature   would be typically and then we are running them  at 100 operation and we do that non-stop for two   thousand dollars you know essentially I do have  one other business question and that is I've seen   a lot of technologies that really are impressive  and wow you that if they can't make business sense   it's it's a it's a tough road you're going to  be going up against fans that cost 50 cents 75   cents you know a dollar are you going to be able  to really pit this product against those commodity   parts that you can get every you can get really  cheap I'm just wondering as a business sense   they're not 50 cents but but it's a good question  uh ultimately this is not a commodity this is   a new Cutting Edge technology that we're just  introducing into the market so off the bat it's   certainly going to be a little bit more expensive  I would say than a fan but not prohibitively so so   we are working with the device manufacturers right  now and it makes perfect sense the cost structure   makes perfect sense for them to use it uh in in  notebooks and also in all these other devices   that I talked about are we as cheap as a fan  no but uh is it priced that would be reasonable   and acceptable by the device manufacturers the  answer is an emphatic yes okay so we've seen the   errors yet in a lot of other demos but it doesn't  matter to you put in the laptop and you actually   have a couple laptops to show off the air jets  in action right so that's right tell me what's   happening sure so here we have a 13 inch laptop  ultra thin laptop and the one on the left is off   the shelf and it has a fan in it when you run  the cinebench on a steady state basis the CPU   power that is supported by the fan and the thermal  solution is 12 and a half watts of CPU power and   that's the steady state performance we've been  running cinebench in here for a while what we've   done is taken the same laptop removed the fan  and retrofitted it with three airjet mini inside   the laptop and we are able to sustain 15 watts  of power for the CPU so you're seeing a pretty   decent bump up in performance and of course at the  same time the one with the edge that is completely   quiet and of course the fan makes noise the  reason that we only were put put three engine   mini in this is because when you're retrofitting  the space that is available is not ideal for   putting in Edge at mini so we could only squeeze  in three even though there was plenty of space   left over because it was just not the right shape  for us to put a fourth Edge at mini but Apples to   Apples if you actually utilize all the space that  is taken up by the fan a fair comparison would be   for mini because in the same space you can put the  four mini and had we been able to put four mini we   would have achieved 20 watts of CPU performance so  12 and a half to 20 noisy too quiet you know and I   will say even this is is actually fairly quiet  too right the fan I mean it is noisier because   this feels completely silent but I kind of wonder  if you go to a bigger laptop that is tuned to be   higher performance right like you're absolutely  right this particular laptop has chosen a lower   RPM operation for the fan in order to keep it  quiet so if you cranked up the fan to a higher   RPM you could push the power for the CPU to 15  watts but it's going to be really noisy right   right but you are going to be hard-pressed to  get better than 15 in an ultra thin laptop 13   inch using fan whereas with 4 mini we can go to 20  and that's actually what you have in one of these   laptops right that's right so here's another  example of a laptop this is a 15 inch laptop   and in this laptop we've been able to put in four  Edge at Mini and you can see that with 4aged mini   you are at 20 watts so if we were able to put 4 in  there we would have gotten the 220 as well right   so with four digit mini uh it is in steady state  the CPU package power supported is 20 watts and   that's that proves the point that we can get to  20 watts with 4AGE at mini and I think to me the   besides the thermal uh messaging the difference  is noise because I can hear this this laptop from   a few feet away that's what we typically get in a  lot of real it's still really thin but because the   fan noise is what kind of drives people crazy  sometimes that's correct that's correct so the   whole point is we are saying you don't have to  compromise on noise you don't have to compromise   on thickness of the laptop but yet you can improve  the performance this particular 15 inch laptop we   put four Edge at mini to show 20 but you could  also design a 15 inch laptop with three airjet   Pro and if you had three Edge at Pro then you  would get 28 watts in the same form factor   with the fan it's at 17. so with the same space  same X Y area you can put 300Z Pro and you can   get to 28 so from 17 you're going to 28 and at  the same time reducing eliminating the noise so that's that's the that's basically shows  the advantage of the air jet and of course   you can do that we're also making some a real key  improvements to the industrial design you don't   need to have vents at the bottom of the laptop  anymore and also you can make the device dust   proof and get the same performance and actually  that's that's a really good point because I think   that's this kind of makes a a good point here this  is the same smaller level 13 inch laptop that's   right laptop so this is the fan that goes into the  touch and inch laptop that it currently ships with   and what we've done is we've taken that out and  replaced that with three airjet mini you can see   the dust cards uh with three Edge at Mini and but  you can see that the area that's taken up at the   300 mini is actually less than the fan area it's  just a odd shaped fan so we couldn't put a fourth   but in the same area X Y area you could actually  put a fourth Edge at mini that's that's the that's   the point I was trying to make but also with  the fan you have all these holes at the bottom   and this is the reason why dust goes in  because of all these holes at the bottom   what we do when you have an edge at mini system is  you can completely block it with the over here so   you can see it right so that's so it's completely  blocked you block it for your demo there's no   reason for us to have those anymore obviously  you know if you're designing with airjet mini   you would not make these holes because it's  actually expensive to make this whole CNC is   expensive so you don't need the holes but the  what we did was because the holes were already   there we just covered it with opaque material so  that there's no air going in through those vents   right and you know the interesting thing to me is  like I don't almost every laptop I've seen has a   fan vents on the bottom that's correct and the  classic point is you you put on your shag carpet   or your pillow a lot of people they put on their  comforter and they're edited you that's a problem   because you just blocked all those fan vents right  that's correct actually I mean nowadays it's more   important than ever that your laptop works well  on a comforter and when you have Inlet vents at   the bottom it's actually terrible idea to put  it on a comforter because the inlet vents are   at the bottom they get completely blocked and  what happens when you put it on comforter is   then the fan revs up in speed trying to compensate  but still it can't so it keeps thrashing it gets   faster louder but it doesn't really create any  airflow because all the inlet vents are blocked   and so then the whole notebook gets hotter so  it's really counterintuitive but when you're in   a comforter and you're in bed your laptop might  become hotter and noisier and less performing   it's a classic story right because a lot of people  run into that problem but with airjet you you can   suck air in the sides or that's correct so our  design I mean guideline really is you know right   here in the in the center at the back right here  at the center of the back you would have the inlet   rent if you're using airjet nothing at the bottom  okay right here at the center of the back so the   air goes in through that and uh and you also  cover that went with the dust guard dust filter   material so that even though there's actually a  vent and air is going through the discrete vent   at the back no dust is going in because you can  cover the vent with dust proof filter material   right the same material that I showed you that  we put on the airjet itself you can also put on   the inlet vent and again you couldn't do that  you couldn't put the dust proof material in a   laptop with a fan because not enough back pressure  that's correct uh of course the the big question   for a lot of people too is um when are we going to  see this in a product as I told you at CES we are   working with several device manufacturers as we  speak designing this into their future devices and   you'll see products coming out commercial products  coming out into the market later this year   um but I can't I can't you know jump the gun  and make announcements before our customers   are ready to do it sure uh and then I guess  the natural part of the other part of that   question is where else are we going to see this  clearly we've seen a lot of demonstrations with   PC laptops good place for it but this seems like  you know we could go on to m.2 drives you can go   into cameras you can get into gaming handheld set  where else do you think we're going to see this   we are seeing interest from several  markets as we speak uh we started off   with notebooks and I've seen the demos this  one right here is The Notebook where we've   got Fourier jet minis in it if you replace  the if insta4age at mini you put in three   air jet pro into this then you can get the  CPU power up to 28 Watts those are the two   popular configurations that we are currently  working on Fourier jet meaning getting you to   20 watts of CPU power or 38 jet pro getting you to  28 watts of CPA power in a notebook so that's very   popular but the same mini and pro can be used  as you said in other devices handheld gaming   um one aged Pro or two aged mini would do very  well uh for a handheld gaming device we're also   seeing interest from uh nvme M2 SSD manufacturers  uh once you get to densities that are you know   four or eight terabytes uh with the you know SSD  controller and and a thunderbolt Port controller   and so on so forth you're now hitting a thermal  envelope that cannot be sustained in a small   farm factor using only passive heat dissipation so  they're showing a lot of interest in uh including   their jet mini into those devices we also seeing  a lot of interest from um uh camera manufacturers   webcams small security cams and also um you know  action cameras uh they're becoming very powerful   in terms of the kind of video they can capture  and the AI that they include and so their thermal   envelopes are going beyond the amount of heat that  can be dissipated in the small form factor that   they have so adding an edge it would work very  well for them and um you're making these yourself   or are you fabulous we are actually an integrated  design and manufacturing company so we Fab it   ourselves and the reason for that you know this  is built using unique design techniques unique   materials and unique manufacturing processes  so there isn't a Fab out there that knows how   to do this we built this process technology  ourselves and so we built the Fab that you   know uh manifests so process technology ourselves  so we have a Fab in Taiwan where we're fabbing it   um but as we scale you know we absolutely do  intend to have manufacturing partners that   will help us to scale much faster than we can  do ourselves another interesting segment we are   seeing a lot of interest in is Mini PC you know  there's no display right it's just a Mini PC and   so you can connect a keyboard to it and connect a  display to it and make it into a PC so the Mini PC   market uh is pretty interesting because they want  it to be really small like a hockey puck but at   the same time have very high processing capability  and but the account is all thermals and no one   wants the Mini PC to be noisy so adding airjet  in it is a perfect match so basically anywhere   where there's a a really hot CPU GPU or sensor it  feels like this is like a perfect application for   it that's we think so we think so uh you know I  mean as I said right now you know we are operating   in the you know 10 to let's say 30 40 Watts as  the overall processing power that we're able   to support in this generation with airjet mini  airjet pro this is scalable so you can put you   know four Edge at Mini or two or three urgent pro  and get to supporting that type of CPU power but   some of your gaming applications you need a lot  more than that so we do intend to address that   kind of performance requirement but in subsequent  generation sub products we're not quite there yet   but we hope to get there in the coming years okay  because I mean that's obviously that people want   to know can I call my video card or my desktop  in this but we're not there that's getting too   far down the road I guess yeah I mean we this is  a first generation product we just introduced it   and we are using techniques to build this that are  semiconductor technology based we also use a lot   of techniques from the display industry that we  repurpose for this particular product so all of   those bought well for us to be able to continue  to innovate and improve performance year on year   at a pretty significant clip we would like to you  know bring the same uh you know expectation that   you have in the in the semiconductor industry  at large you know everybody expects things to   improve 30 40 50 one year to the next we believe  we can achieve the same but we're just beginning   that Journey anyway thanks for having us down  here showing us all this great stuff we really   hope to see it in action soon and hopefully  we'll see that on PC world's YouTube channel   so come back to PC world's YouTube channel  for more videos hopefully coming covering   products from for our systems as well as other  awesome things in the PC ecosystem foreign

2023-02-27

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