Frore announces AirJet successor for liquid cooling
Frore wants to move coolant with vibration and thus enable extreme cooling performance, even in data centers.
The previous two sizes of the AirJet: Both are about as wide as a 2-euro piece.
(Image: c't / mue)
- Florian MĂĽssig
Last year, Frore launched a new type of cooler on the market: vibrating membranes generate an airflow that draws heat away from local hotspots with high static air pressure. However, the coolers shown so far, called AirJet, are designed for comparatively low heat dissipation values: An AirJet can dissipate a good 5 watts.
This is sufficient for weak CPUs or LEDs, but several AirJets need to be combined for SSDs or notebook processors. Above the size of desktop PCs, the whole thing is physically impractical, even if you disregard the cumulative costs. You don't even need to mention the amount of waste heat produced by servers. In this respect, it was very surprising that Frore gave a presentation at the Hot Chips conference and presented his little AirJet in the midst of CPUs, GPUs and AI accelerators.
LiquidJet
The solution to the puzzle came at the end: Frore is working on a variant of his technology that moves water instead of air. In the same form factor and with an identical flow rate as an AirJet, a LiquidJet could dissipate around 22,000 watts, which is several orders of magnitude higher. This is at least the theoretically achievable value, says Frore. Of course, this also requires the right infrastructure, i.e. plenty of radiators.
Unlike AirJet, LiquidJet is not yet a product that interested parties can buy immediately. In this respect, it remains to be seen how much of the promised theoretical cooling capacity will remain in the end. The internal membranes that are supposed to move the water are likely to be quite different to those used for air. It can also be assumed that a LiquidJet requires significantly more than the one watt of electrical power that an AirJet swallows.
(Image:Â Frore)
And then there is the question of durability: in principle, the base plate must be constantly bombarded by water jets instead of air jets in order to tear away the temperature boundary layer and thus achieve the high cooling capacity. However, the energy required for this is then slowed down by the metal of the base plate itself, which certainly causes it to wear out.
(mue)