"Funded by Intel, the researchers at Purdue University developed an new technology that would improve computer chip cooling dramatically. The new technology is based on ionic wind engines and should increase chip cooling rates by as much as 250%."

http://www.megagames.com/news/html/hardware/abreakthroughincpucooling.shtml

Thats some crazy sh*t. 

Wait so my method of ice cubes in a ziplock bag is already outdated, damn.

Something to look forward to, but for mass market appeal it better be affordable.

Microsoft should call those guys :P

So, it's 250%... but compared to what? Standard heatsink + fan? Vapochill micro? THE Vapochill?

I read about this the othe day. Here's the article which slashdot linked to. It doesn't dumb down the content as much: Link

That should answer your question.

Don´t worry Hus, with ice cubes and ziplock bags you will be save for years to come, personally I bought an extra freezer to store my computer in.... and some beer of course :)

 Me like content with no smart...???

....anyway thanx

Saw this on BBC, it's 250% better than standard fan cooling, which is basically probs 95% of PCs, so hopefully we're getting close to that 10 GHz chip IBM made, but had to run at absolute zero!

^^ thats what I was thinking, if you could really use this right you could have a quad core with 10 GHz each... photorealizm here we come... but seriously even if they manage to produce it in three years time I´d bet it would take at least six years till its afordable, still who knows maybe it will be ready for the next gen... or like many new inventions it might porve to expencive and never see a mass market, still 250% sounds so awesome... cand even think of what this would do to GPUs...

This seems quite odd. The biggest thing that stuck out to me, is where the heat is going - its not like its sucking the heat from the chip, its just "moving it" off the chip surface. Seems to me that it would still require fans and traditional cooling - just improve the cooling on the chip surface (and maybe reduce the size of heatsinks needed).

Cute idea though. I hope the electrons/ionic flow doesn't interface with the chip operation.