Stephen Schenck / Android Authority
TL;DR xMEMS is showing off its µCooling system that uses ultrasonic speakers to move air.
The system is silent, water-resistant, and can small enough to be used in wearables.
A ducted µCooling solution for phones could move up to 0.1 cubic feet of air a minute.
Heat is arguably the biggest enemy of modern processors. We can build incredibly fast chips, but run them too fast, and they’re going to start to melt down. As a result, nearly every device we use has to make some sort of balance between performance and thermal emissions. This year at CES in Las Vegas, we’re learning about an innovative new way that xMEMS is trying to tackle that problem, giving even compact mobile devices another option for staying cool.
Don’t want to miss the best from Android Authority? Set us as a favorite source in Google Discover to never miss our latest exclusive reports, expert analysis, and much more.
to never miss our latest exclusive reports, expert analysis, and much more. You can also set us as a preferred source in Google Search by clicking the button below.
Heat, heat, go away Cooling stuff down isn’t too complicated, at its core: Expose your hot thing to something cooler, and the heat will start to even out between the two of them. The problem is that our chips keep generating more and more heat, so we need them to interact with cooler things over and over again. Maybe you’ve got a fancy PC rig that pumps water around to achieve that goal, but by far the most popular way to get there is by using air as your medium, and ensuring a steady supply of cool air by moving it with a fan.
That works, but fans present all sorts of problems themselves — especially for mobile devices. Noise is a big one (as you PC gamers surely know), and while it’s not impossible, trying to make a phone with a fan water-resistant introduces all new challenges.
From speaker to air pump Solid-state MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) components like speakers and microphones are already commonplace in mobile tech. They’re tiny, and they vibrate — either to produce sound, or as they’re detecting in. But the team at xMEMS looked at these parts and asked themselves, “What else can we do with this?” As it turns out: cooling!
... continue reading