14 DAY TRIAL // Sun Microsystems just received its patent for a radical new cooling solution that uses a metal heatsink coupled with a closed circuit fluid system that is moved through the use of magneto-hydrodynamic technology. While there are many cooling solutions for computers that are using the heat pipe concept, this system is better as it migrates heat around the movement of the internal coolant liquid without the need of an external pump, making it very silent and power effective.
Sun's new cooling technology uses a magneto-hydrodynamic effect in order to open and close tiny internal valves inside the heat pipes in order to create a sustained pumping action and while the end result is the coolant moving one direction or another, there are no moving parts to pump the liquid. The bladder and valve systems are operated remotely by a magnetic field and so they are very silent.
Just like in any traditional heat pipe design, the role of the inside liquid is to move away from the source as much heat as possible and take it to another area where it can be safely dissipated while using a traditional heat sink. While the whole system may look overly complicated, Sun Microsystems considers that it will prove effective in cooling server systems and other hot computers. As the design is easily scalable, such a cooling solution could be used to cool not only the central processing unit, but also the mainboard chipset and any other number of hardware components.
As the caterpillar cooling system uses less power, while being more silent and safer to operate than a traditional liquid cooling solution, Sun's technology could see a broad adoption in areas where now liquid coolers are being used . As the bladder and valve systems inside the heat pipes are switched on and off, the implementation of a thermal state monitoring solution that could control the "caterpillar" heatsink should be pretty straight forward. As the whole cooler is very compact, according to the news site tgdaily it is well suited for use in small and crammed places like server systems as it can provide a greater degree of cooling than traditional solutions while keeping the power consumption level down.