SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. – The importance of thermal management to Intel's microprocessors was demonstrated by the prominence given to a recent announcement about heat sink technology. At the Intel Developers' Forum, Intel revealed a new heat sink and fan design with the ability to dissipate more than 50 percent more heat than previous heat sink designs. The new processors dissipate 83 W, and to cool them, the new fan has a circular set of fins with bent tips. The fan creates a two-pass cooling effect by pulling in the air omni-directionally, and then pushing it out through the lower portion of the heat sink.

A heat sink design similar to this was introduced by Agilent Technologies two years ago, although Agilent has since decided to license the technology rather than manufacture heat sinks.

Bill Carson, marketing manager at Agilent, told Advanced Packaging that they are licensing the designs to “top-tier heat sink makers,” in part because those companies have the right capabilities to reduce the cost of manufacturing the heat sinks. Carson said that the heat sinks were designed when Agilent had to “invent their way out” of the problems created by microprocessors in HP workstations that dissipated much more heat than originally planned.