Vapor Chambers in Blade Server CPU Cooling Solutions

Author(s):  
Matt Connors

Current blade processors need air cooling solutions that dissipate 100–300 watts with heat sinks that are less than 30 mm high. In order to cool these processors, the heat sink base has to grow in length and width to compensate for the lack of available height. As these dimensions grow, decreasing the base spreading of the heat sink becomes an important factor is decreasing the overall resistance of the heat sink. A vapor chamber used as a substitute to common copper or aluminum as the base of the heat sink can increase performance by 20–25%. A vapor chamber is a two phase heat transport system that significantly reduces the spreading resistance in applications where there is a high heat flux processor coupled with a large heat sink. In this paper, a CFD model will be constructed to predict the performance gains realized by using a vapor chamber base in lieu of a copper or aluminum base. These predictions will then be experimentally tested to confirm the modeling parameters and the actual measured thermal performance of the heat sink. By utilizing vapor chambers in heat sink design, thermal engineers will gain valuable heat sink performance within the constraints imposed by the blade system architecture.

Author(s):  
Devdatta P. Kulkarni ◽  
Priyanka Tunuguntla ◽  
Guixiang Tan ◽  
Casey Carte

Abstract In recent years, rapid growth is seen in computer and server processors in terms of thermal design power (TDP) envelope. This is mainly due to increase in processor core count, increase in package thermal resistance, challenges in multi-chip integration and maintaining generational performance CAGR. At the same time, several other platform level components such as PCIe cards, graphics cards, SSDs and high power DIMMs are being added in the same chassis which increases the server level power density. To mitigate cooling challenges of high TDP processors, mainly two cooling technologies are deployed: Liquid cooling and advanced air cooling. To deploy liquid cooling technology for servers in data centers, huge initial capital investment is needed. Hence advanced air-cooling thermal solutions are being sought that can be used to cool higher TDP processors as well as high power non-CPU components using same server level airflow boundary conditions. Current air-cooling solutions like heat pipe heat sinks, vapor chamber heat sinks are limited by the heat transfer area, heat carrying capacity and would need significantly more area to cool higher TDP than they could handle. Passive two-phase thermosiphon (gravity dependent) heat sinks may provide intermediate level cooling between traditional air-cooled heat pipe heat sinks and liquid cooling with higher reliability, lower weight and lower cost of maintenance. This paper illustrates the experimental results of a 2U thermosiphon heat sink used in Intel reference 2U, 2 node system and compare thermal performance using traditional heat sinks solutions. The objective of this study was to showcase the increased cooling capability of the CPU by at least 20% over traditional heat sinks while maintaining cooling capability of high-power non-CPU components such as Intel’s DIMMs. This paper will also describe the methodology that will be used for DIMMs serviceability without removing CPU thermal solution, which is critical requirement from data center use perspective.


2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Green ◽  
Peter Kottke ◽  
Xuefei Han ◽  
Casey Woodrum ◽  
Thomas Sarvey ◽  
...  

Three-dimensional (3D) stacked electronics present significant advantages from an electrical design perspective, ranging from shorter interconnect lengths to enabling heterogeneous integration. However, multitier stacking exacerbates an already difficult thermal problem. Localized hotspots within individual tiers can provide an additional challenge when the high heat flux region is buried within the stack. Numerous investigations have been launched in the previous decade seeking to develop cooling solutions that can be integrated within the 3D stack, allowing the cooling to scale with the number of tiers in the system. Two-phase cooling is of particular interest, because the associated reduced flow rates may allow reduction in pumping power, and the saturated temperature condition of the coolant may offer enhanced device temperature uniformity. This paper presents a review of the advances in two-phase forced cooling in the past decade, with a focus on the challenges of integrating the technology in high heat flux 3D systems. A holistic approach is applied, considering not only the thermal performance of standalone cooling strategies but also coolant selection, fluidic routing, packaging, and system reliability. Finally, a cohesive approach to thermal design of an evaporative cooling based heat sink developed by the authors is presented, taking into account all of the integration considerations discussed previously. The thermal design seeks to achieve the dissipation of very large (in excess of 500 W/cm2) background heat fluxes over a large 1 cm × 1 cm chip area, as well as extreme (in excess of 2 kW/cm2) hotspot heat fluxes over small 200 μm × 200 μm areas, employing a hybrid design strategy that combines a micropin–fin heat sink for background cooling as well as localized, ultrathin microgaps for hotspot cooling.


Author(s):  
H. Chiba ◽  
T. Ogushi ◽  
H. Nakajima

In recent years, since heat dissipation rates and high frequency electronic devices have been increasing, a heat sink with high heat transfer performance is required to cool these devices. Heat sink utilizing micro-channels with several ten microns are expected to provide an excellent cooling performance because of their high heat transfer capacities due to small channel. Therefore, various porous materials such as cellular metals have been investigated for heat sink applications. However, heat sink using conventional porous materials has a high pressure drop because the cooling fluid flow through the pores is complex. Among the described porous materials, a lotus-type porous metal with straight pores is preferable for heat sinks due to the small pressured drop. In present work, cooling performance of the lotus copper heat sink for air cooling and water cooling is introduced. The experimental data for air cooling show 13.2 times higher than that for the conventional groove fins. And, the data for the water cooling show 1.7 times higher than that for the micro-channels. It is concluded that lotus copper heat sink is the most prospective candidate for high power electronics devices.


Author(s):  
Aalok Trivedi ◽  
Nikhil Lakhkar ◽  
Madhusudhan Iyengar ◽  
Michael Ellsworth ◽  
Roger Schmidt ◽  
...  

With the continuing industry trends towards smaller, faster and higher power devices, thermal management continues to be extremely important in the development of electronics. In this era of high heat fluxes, air cooling still remains the primary cooling solution in desktops mainly due to its cost. The primary goal of a good thermal design is to ensure that the chip can function at its rated frequency or speed while maintaining the junction temperature within the specified limit. The first and foremost step in measurement of thermal resistance and hence thermal characterization is accurate determination of junction temperature. Use of heat sinks as a thermal solution is well documented in the literature. Previously, the liquid cooled cold plate tester was studied using a different approach and it was concluded that the uncertainty in heat transfer coefficient was within 8% with errors in appropriate parameters, this result was supported by detailed uncertainty analysis based on Monte-Carlo simulations. However, in that study the tester was tested computationally. In this paper, testing and characterization of a heat sink tester is presented. Heat sinks were tested according to JEDEC JESD 16.1 standard for forced convection. It was observed that the error between computational and experimental values of thermal resistances was 10% for the cases considered.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (19) ◽  
pp. 6347
Author(s):  
Taha Baig ◽  
Zabdur Rehman ◽  
Hussain Ahmed Tariq ◽  
Shehryar Manzoor ◽  
Majid Ali ◽  
...  

Due to high heat flux generation inside microprocessors, water-cooled heat sinks have gained special attention. For the durability of the microprocessor, this generated flux should be effectively removed. The effective thermal management of high-processing devices is now becoming popular due to high heat flux generation. Heat removal plays a significant role in the longer operation and better performance of heat sinks. In this work, to tackle the heat generation issues, a slotted fin minichannel heat sink (SFMCHS) was investigated by modifying a conventional straight integral fin minichannel heat sink (SIFMCHS). SFMCHSs with fin spacings of 0.5 mm, 1 mm, and 1.5 mm were numerically studied. The numerical results were then compared with SIFMCHSs present in the literature. The base temperatures recorded for two slots per fin minichannel heat sink (SPFMCHS), with 0.5 mm, 1 mm, and 1.5 mm fin spacings, were 42.81 °C, 46.36 °C, and 48.86 °C, respectively, at 1 LPM. The reductions in base temperature achieved with two SPFMCHSs were 9.20 %, 8.74 %, and 7.39% for 0.5 mm, 1 mm, and 1.5 mm fin spacings, respectively, as compared to SIFMCHSs reported in the literature. The reductions in base temperature noted for three SPFMCHSs were 8.53%, 9.05%, and 5.95% for 0.5 mm, 1 mm, and 1.5 mm fin spacings, respectively, at 1 LPM, as compared to SIFMCHSs reported in the literature. In terms of heat transfer performance, the base temperature and thermal resistance of the 0.5 mm-spaced SPFMCHS is better compared to 1 mm and 1.5 mm fin spacings. The uniform temperature distribution at the base of the heat sink was observed in all cases solved in current work.


Author(s):  
D. Bogojevic ◽  
K. Sefiane ◽  
A. J. Walton ◽  
H. Lin ◽  
G. Cummins ◽  
...  

Two-phase flow boiling in microchannels is one of the most promising cooling technologies able to cope with high heat fluxes generated by the next generation of central processor units (CPU). If flow boiling is to be used as a thermal management method for high heat flux electronics it is necessary to understand the behaviour of a non-uniform heat distribution, which is typically the case observed in a real operating CPU. The work presented is an experimental study of two-phase boiling in a multi-channel silicon heat sink with non-uniform heating, using water as a cooling liquid. Thin nickel film sensors, integrated on the back side of the heat sinks were used in order to gain insight related to temperature fluctuations caused by two-phase flow instabilities under non-uniform heating. The effect of various hotspot locations on the temperature profile and pressure drop has been investigated, with hotspots located in different positions along the heat sink. It was observed that boiling inside microchannels with non-uniform heating led to high temperature non-uniformity in transverse direction.


Author(s):  
Mitsuo Hashimoto ◽  
Hiroto Kasai ◽  
Kazuma Usami ◽  
Hiroyuki Ryoson ◽  
Kazuaki Yazawa ◽  
...  

A two-phase heat spreader has been developed for cooling high heat flux sources in high-power lasers, high-intensity light-emitting diodes, and semiconductor power devices. The heat spreader targets the passive cooling of heat sources with fluxes greater than 5 W/mm2 without requiring any active power consumption for the thermal solution. The prototype vapor chamber consists of an evaporator plate, a condenser plate and an adiabatic section, with water as the phase-change fluid. The custom-designed high heat flux source is composed of a platinum resistive heating pattern and a temperature sensor on an aluminum nitride substrate which is soldered to the outside of the evaporator. Experiments were performed with several different microstructures as evaporator surfaces under varying heat loads. The first microstructure investigated, a screen mesh, dissipated 2 W/mm2 of heat load but with an unacceptably high evaporator temperature. A sintered copper powder microstructure with particles of 50 μm mean diameter supported 8.5 W/mm2 without dryout. Four sets of particle diameters and different thicknesses for the sintered copper powder evaporators were tested. Additionally, some of the sintered structures were coated with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNT) that were rendered hydrophilic. Such nano-structured evaporators successfully showed a further reduction in thermal resistance of the vapor chamber.


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