Title:  Microfluidic Cooling for Densely Integrated Microelectronic Systems

Committee: 

Dr. Bakir, Advisor        

Dr. Raychowdhury, Chair

Dr. Yalamanchili

Abstract:

The objective of the proposed research is to develop cooling technologies which address the needs of future electronics and to quantify their effect on the performance of modern and future computing systems.  The challenge of dissipating ever greater amounts of heat is a major barrier to continuing improvement in integrated circuit performance.  Another major barrier to increased performance is increasing demand on system-level interconnects.  High density 2.5D and 3D architectures have emerged as a solution to the interconnect problem, but these high density architectures increase package power densities and only exacerbate the thermal challenge.  Microfluidic heat sinks are capable of cooling heat fluxes an order of magnitude higher than traditional air cooling technologies, in a form factor small enough to be compatible with high density architectures.  This research aims to help enable the next generation of high performance computing architectures through the design, microfabrication, and characterization of microfluidic cooling technologies.  In addition to thermally characterizing microfluidic heat sink designs in passive silicon, a microfluidic heat sink has been integrated into a 28 nm FPGA, where benefits in temperature, throughput, and power were characterized.  The proposed work aims to build on these 2D CMOS measurements by quantifying the performance benefits of high density integration enabled through microfluidic cooling.