Selecting optimal parallel microchannel configurations for active hot spot mitigation of multicore microprocessors in real time

TL;DR

This paper investigates optimal microchannel configurations for cooling microprocessors with non-uniform heat loads, demonstrating that leveraging flow maldistribution can effectively mitigate hot spots and improve thermal management.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed simulation study of microchannel configurations considering non-uniform heat loads and shows how maldistribution can be exploited for better hot spot mitigation.

Findings

Non-uniform heat loads cause temperature maldistribution.

Certain configurations maximize heat removal and uniformity.

Flow maldistribution can be strategically used to target hot spots.

Abstract

Design of effective micro cooling systems to address the challenges of ever increasing heat flux from microdevices requires deep examination of real time problems and has been tackled in depth. The most common and apparently misleading assumption while designing micro cooling systems is that the heat flux generated by the device is uniform, but the reality is far from this. Detailed simulations have been performed by considering non uniform heat load employing the configurations U, I, Z for parallel microchannel systems with water and nanofluids as the coolants. An Intel Core i7 4770 3.40 GHz quad core processor has been mimicked using heat load data retrieved from a real microprocessor with non-uniform core activity. The study clearly demonstrates that there is a non-uniform thermal load induced temperature maldistribution along with the already existent flow maldistribution induced temperature maldistribution. The suitable configuration(s) for maximum possible overall heat removal for a hot zone while maximizing the uniformity of cooling have been tabulated. An Eulerian Lagrangian model of the nanofluids show that such smart coolants not only reduce the hot spot core temperature, but also the hot spot core region and thermal slip mechanisms of Brownian diffusion and thermophoresis are at the crux of this. The present work conclusively shows that high flow maldistribution leads to high thermal maldistribution, as the common prevalent notion, is no longer valid and existing maldistribution can be effectively utilized to tackle specific hot spot location, making the present study important to the field.