Engineering
Using Thermoelectric Coolers to Manage Hot Spots in Microprocessors
Quick fact
Thermoelectric coolers can pump heat away from a small, focused area—like a microprocessor hot spot—faster than a traditional heat sink, by converting an electric current into a temperature difference. However, they consume additional power, so their use is a trade-off between cooling and energy efficiency.
Why this is interesting
Your smartphone’s processor can get so hot in one tiny spot that it throttles performance, yet the rest of the chip is cool. What if you could pump that heat away actively, right where it forms?