New technology may cool the laptop, prof says (w/ Video)

October 29, 2009

Does your laptop sometimes get so hot that it can almost be used to fry eggs? New technology may help cool it and give information technology a unique twist, says Jairo Sinova, a Texas A&M University physics professor.

Sinova and colleagues from Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory, Institute of Physics ASCR, University of Cambridge and University of Nottingham have had their research published in the renowned journal .

Laptops are getting increasingly powerful, but as their sizes are getting smaller they are heating up, so how to deal with excessive heat becomes a headache, Sinova explains.


This video is not supported by your browser at this time.

"The crux of the problem is the way information is processed," Sinova notes. "Laptops and some other devices use flows of electric charge to process information, but they also produce heat.

"Theoretically, excessive heat may melt the ," he adds. "This also wastes a considerable amount of energy."

Is there a solution?

One approach may be found in Sinova's research - an alternative way to process information.

"Our research looks at the of electrons, tiny particles that naked eyes cannot detect," the Texas A&M professor explains. "The directions they spin can be used to record and process information."

To process information, Sinova says, it is necessary to create information, transmit the information and read the information. How these are done is the big question.

"The device we designed injects the electrons with spin pointing in a particular direction according to the information we want to process, and then we transmit the to another place in the device but with the spin still surviving, and finally we are able to measure the spin direction via a voltage that they produce," Sinova explains.

The biggest challenge to creating a spin-based device is the distance that the spins will survive in a particular direction.

"Transmission is no problem. You can think for comparison that if the old devices could only transmit the information to several hundred feet away, with our device, information can be easily transmitted to hundreds of miles away," he says. "It is very efficient."

Talking about its practical application, Sinova is very optimistic. "This new device, as the only all-semiconductor spin-based device for possible information processing, has a lot of real practical potential," he says. "One huge thing is that it is operational at room temperature, which nobody has been able to achieve until now. It may bring in a new and much more efficient way to process information."

Source: Texas A&M University

3.7 /5 (6 votes)  

Filter


Move the slider to adjust rank threshold, so that you can hide some of the comments.


Display comments: newest first

gunslingor1
Oct 29, 2009

Rank: not rated yet
Doesn't sound like he knows what's he's doing. He's still transporting electrons, whether they have a particular spin or not. So I don't see how any energy is concerved.
antialias
Oct 29, 2009

Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Curently it takes many electrons for one bit of information to be passed on. With this every electron would pass on one bit of information.

Less electrons moved = less heat.
Krystoffr
Oct 30, 2009

Rank: not rated yet
If a state of logic could be made accurate, without the excessive current that is used to saturate the transistor. Both Power Consumption and heat will be dramatically reduced.
Alexa
Oct 31, 2009

Rank: not rated yet
..Less electrons moved = less heat...
It means higher noise/signal ratio, too. It's not problem to decrease currents in contemporary microprocessors. The problem is the noise of individual electrons, which becomes significant after then.
Alexa
Oct 31, 2009

Rank: not rated yet
Spinotronic made easy: David Awschalom of UC-Santa Barbara describes, what spintronics is and why it is important.

http://www.youtub...bGq634yU
Rank 3.7 /5 (6 votes)
Related Stories
Relevant PhysicsForums posts

More news stories

Explained: Sigma

It's a question that arises with virtually every major new finding in science or medicine: What makes a result reliable enough to be taken seriously? The answer has to do with statistical significance -- but ...

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 09, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (19) | comments 76

Quantum physicist explains $100K offer for proof scaled-up quantum computing is impossible

(PhysOrg.com) -- MIT researcher Scott Aaronson has certainly riled the physics community with his offer this past Friday, of $100,000 to anyone who can prove that scaled-up quantum computing is impossible. ...

Physics / Quantum Physics

created Feb 08, 2012 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (13) | comments 35 | with audio podcast weblog

Diamond light, brighter than the sun

It’s the size of five football pitches and generates light 10 billion times brighter than the sun. As the Diamond Light Source celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, Penny Bailey visits one of the ...

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 07, 2012 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (7) | comments 18 | with audio podcast

Physicists 'record' magnetic breakthrough

An international team of scientists has demonstrated a revolutionary new way of magnetic recording which will allow information to be processed hundreds of times faster than by current hard drive technology.

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 07, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (41) | comments 14 | with audio podcast

Hints of the Higgs - papers are submitted

Back in December 2011, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN presented some exciting results that provided tantalising hints of the Higgs boson.

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 08, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (7) | comments 10


Google might launch Drive for cloud storage soon

(PhysOrg.com) -- Google's next big move, according to the Wall Street Journal, is a cloud storage service called Drive. Hardly first to the plate, Google is simply catching up to introducing its cloud reposi ...

Latin America mining boom clashes with conservation

Latin America is experiencing a mining boom as prices rise fuelled by a hike in global demand, but the region is also being hit by a wave of violent protests, strikes and rallies by environmentalists.

Love a click away in Indonesia's Twitter Republic

He was a geeky kid from Yogyakarta, she a glamorous city girl in Jakarta. In a country with one of the world's most vibrant social networking scenes they fell in love on Twitter.

Europeans protest controversial Internet pact

Tens of thousands of people marched in protests in more than a dozen European cities Saturday against a controversial anti-online piracy pact that critics say could curtail Internet freedom.

Walney offshore wind farm is world's biggest (for now)

(PhysOrg.com) -- The Walney wind farm on the Irish Sea--characterized by high tides, waves and windy weather--officially opened this week. The farm is treated in the press as a very big deal as the Walney ...

Navy to begin tests on electromagnetic railgun prototype launcher

The Office of Naval Research (ONR)'s Electromagnetic (EM) Railgun program will take an important step forward in the coming weeks when the first industry railgun prototype launcher is tested at a facility ...