Total system power minimization of microprocessors using refrigerated systems for electronic cooling

Power dissipation and thermal problems have become a growing issue for scaled technology. This phenomenon drives the need for advance cooling systems. It is well-known that cooling the operating temperature results in reduced electric power and/or speed gains. Since cooling cost penalizes the total power, a refrigeration system is developed and experimentally tested to demonstrate that cooling the high performance microprocessor can lead to overall system power improvement. A processor that dissipates 175.4W of maximum power with 30% electronic leakage power operating at 97°C is cooled using our refrigeration system. Measurements show that with a minimum refrigeration COP of 2.7, the processor operates with junction temperature <40°C and offers a 25% total system power reduction over the non-refrigerated design. This experiment is the first demonstration of active cooling that lead reduced total wall power. With an improved compressor that maintains the COP across a broad range of cooling capacity, our analysis shows that at least >13% of total power is saved across the entire range of processor utilization.