I am delighted to have the opportunity to write this editorial and follow in the footsteps of my illustrious colleagues at ElectronicsCooling, both past and present. In keeping with tradition, I would like to share some thoughts that have been on my mind recently. This is an exciting time to be a thermal engineer in the electronics industry. Our industry is experiencing unprecedented scrutiny on the energy efficiency of its products across a wide range of markets. Some of this focus on energy consumption arises from: concern from governmental and standards bodies on the trend of rapidly rising energy use by the information technology sector; an inward desire by the industry to reduce the total cost of ownership of the large “internet” datacenters (facilities that house server farms); the need to manage power use while achieving the next level of computational performance in supercomputer clusters (exascale computing); societal hunger for a significantly enhanced mobile electronics experience (smart phones, tablets); and the emergence of LEDs as a feasible lower energy alternative for lighting.
Large data centers consuming several megawatts of power form the backbone of the internet economy. These facilities are often located in optimal geographies (mild weather, low electricity cost, and reliable power supply) and are cooled using outside air that is ducted into rooms containing server, storage, and network equipment. The use of abundantly available outside air as the primary cooling fluid results in significantly low cooling energy use (at low cost), notwithstanding the need for engineering effort to mitigate the risks of subjecting the electronics to a potentially harsh environment (temperature or humidity ). Large supercomputer clusters can also consume several megawatts of power, but often use liquid cooling to accommodate very high microprocessor heat fluxes and rack power densities that are required to achieve superlative computational performance. Enhanced cooling performance and energy efficiency in these systems play a key enabling role to boost the performance per watt and limit the total energy budget. Emerging thermal techniques in smart phones and LED lighting may include novel low-profile heat spreaders and miniature air movers. The next few years could see an interesting confluence of innovative cooling technologies across many of these markets.
This issue of ElectronicsCooling provides some perspective on current and future innovations: a primer on standards body initiatives to accelerate the adoption of low energy data center design; an example of highly efficient outdoor air cooling for an internet data center; liquid cooling for high performance computers; and low energy piezoelectric fans for low power applications. I hope you all enjoy the technical content. Have wonderful holiday season and a thermally exciting 2013!
Lastly, I want to acknowledge the passing of Richard Chu who was an iconic leader in the field of electronics cooling since 1960 when he joined IBM. In a career spanning more than 5 decades, Dick was a technical leader and had a great many accomplishments to his credit, including over 200 cooling patents, a good number of which were used in IBM products. In addition, he was a mentor to many generations of thermal engineers both within and outside IBM. He was a lifelong champion of a close relationship between industry and academia, as demonstrated by his 25 year active involvement in IBM’s sponsored university research program, which resulted in over 80 thesis related publications at fourteen universities. On a personal note, Dick was a wonderful teacher and a good friend to me. He will be missed by everyone who knew him and by our industry.