It's A Wrap!!!

Well, thats it people. I have come to the end of my blogging duration. But fingers crossed, I will be maintaining it. I wont be posting as often as I do, but if i come across any information related to next generation processors, I will post it up.

Honestly I think that the main idea of this assignment is to build a blogging interest in students and at the same time, expose them to new technologies and skills. I myself have learnt many things from user interaction, to content development, embedding media elements, etc..etc. It really has been a worthwhile experience.

Special thanks to my HCI lecturer, Mr.Andrew for the support and ideas he contributed throughout the assignment period. Not to forget my classmates and friends for sharing the technical and interaction information.

Okay then, it is time for me to sign off. Catch up later on future posts. Ciao..!

Thermoelectric Cooling and Peltier Effect

A key component of the H2Ceramic technology is the thermoelectric cooling exchange. The core of the heat exchanger are two thermoelectric metals or semi-conductors that use the Peltier effect to pump heat from one compound to the other compound when current is applied.

As mentioned before, the concept is similar to a refrigerator that uses a refrigerant to move heat out into the environment, but the thermoelectric cooling uses electrons instead of refrigerant.

At the cold compound, energy(heat) is absorbed by electrons as they pass from one element to another while at the hot compound, electrons release the excess energy. Heat sinks and fans are placed at the hot compound to dissipate the heat away from the system.

Reversing the direction of electron flow in a thermoelectric mechanism causes heat to flow in the opposite direction. Plus varying the current allows for tight temperature controls.

Having said so much, it is obvious that H2Ceramic will become the future of processor cooling. It is able to target the cooling level to be just above ambient room temperature. Therefore, for extended CPU life and risk reduction in overclocking, H2Ceramic technology is the way to go.

Hybrid Cooling Mechanism...

CPU cooling has become more of an issue in recent years as the industry moved to higher frequency processors. CPU clock rates have risen sharply since, producing higher heat generation.

More advanced cooling is often required when a CPU is overclocked in a high-end gaming system. CPU heat output tends to rise exponentially during overclocking. With the rise of overclocking expectations, even liquid cooling solutions and heat sinks are trying hard to keep up. Therefore, a new cooling technology is required.

Let me introduce you to the new H2Ceramic cooling system recently unleashed by Dell. It uses a two-stage cooling process that combines high performance liquid to air heat exchanger, thermoelectric fluid chiller, and control circuitry to optimize CPU cooling with minimal power(Dell Inc, 2007). H2C uses sensors, controls, fan speed management and thermoelectric cooling to keep CPU temperature slightly above room temperature which prevents the formation of humidity condensation or frost.

Thermoelectric cooling modules at the center of the heat exchanger rely on the same concept that is used to counter the effect of direct sunlight on spacecrafts(Dell Inc, 2007). This concept is called the Peltier Effect which pronounces that heat is evolved or absorbed at the junction of two dissimilar metals carrying a small current, depending upon the direction of the current. This is especially useful in transferring or dissipating heat away from the processor.

Thats all for today. In the next post I will be describing more on thermoelectric cooling and the Peltier Effect. So, stay tuned if you are interested.

Qubits and Quantum Computation

Today's computer work by manipulating bits that exist in one of two states: 0 or 1. However, Quantum computers are not limited to only these two basic states. They encode information as quantum bits, or qubits which can also exists in superpositions: effectively this means that the qubit is both in state 0 and state 1.

Picture From http://www.quantiki.org/

For example, any classical register composed of three bits can store only one out of the eight different number combinations in a given time. A quantum register on the other hand is able to store all eight different numbers simultaneously in a quantum superposition.

Once a quantum register is prepared in a superposition of different numbers, operations can be performed on all of them. In brief, quantum processors can perform many different calculations in parallel. This has impact on the execution time and the memory required in the process of computation. According to physicist David Deutsch, this parallelism allows quantum computers to work on a million computations at once while your desktop PC works on one.

Because quantum computers contain these multiple states at once, it has the potential to be far more powerful than today's most powerful supercomputers.

(Qubits: Atoms that work together to act as computer memory and processor.)

(Superposition: Principle of quantum theory that describes the concept about the nature and behavior of matter and forces at the atomic level. It claims that any object is actually in all possible states simultaneously as long as we don't check. The measurement itself causes the object to be limited to a single possibility. Definition from Whatis.com)

Quantum Processing...

Today's post will be about the future of future processors. Its capability of quenching our thirst for speed and computing capacity spreads far from the horizon of silicon chips. Behold the introduction of Quantum Processors...

Moore's Law states that the number of transistors on a microprocessor doubles every 18-24 months, the year 2020 or 2030 will find the circuits on a microprocessor to be measured on an atomic scale. And the logical step would be to create quantum processors which will harness the power of atoms and molecules to perform memory and processing task (Bonsor & Strickland,n.d). Quantum computers have the potential to perform calculations way faster than any silicon-based computer.

On the atomic scale, matter obeys the rule of quantum mechanics which are quite different from classical rules that determine the properties of conventional logic gates. Quantum technology can offer much more than cramming more silicon and multiplying clock speed of processors. It can supply entirely a new kind of computation with new algorithms based on quantum principles.

Following on, I will be discussing on quantum bits called qubits and its difference from classical bits. Plus, I would also discuss briefly on how quantum processors work and its giant leap ahead of today's processors.