How long before cpus run without fans

[MzCatieB]

already does it... just not super powerful. ever wonder why mobiles don't need fans ;) 

[Quaker]

There was no heatsink or fan on the CPU in my Commodore64, so I guess the answer is - sometime in the 1980's. :)

(There's not much of a cooler on the CPU in your smart-phone either.)

[911^NEmeSis]

I voted for the day EA rules the world but just had to change it for the time EA goes bust!

[Rhotis]

Depends on what you are asking.  For high end systems that could be a very long time because high end systems will always be pushing the edge of performance which means heat.  

 

For general computers that can run productivity / office programs and web browsing I think we are within 5 years of that.  

 

I however think we are 5 years away from the bulky desktop computer going the way of the dino for the average consumer.  Most people do not need high end systems.  Most people that even have higher end systems do not need them.  I have a few family members that have i7s and do nothing but web browsing,  use quicken for book keeping and watch youtube.  They have no use for the power they have but they have it because thats what the industry tells them they need.  

 

I think those days are numbered.  I think we are within 5 years of andoid taking over the desktop for the average consumer and their tablet being their main PC that they "dock" to put on a larger screen with a keyboard when at home.  We are literally >< close to this being possible and I think its the next wave.  

 

EDIT -  And then for all of us that told people in the 90s  that "You will be running linux on your computer someday" can say I told you so :P

[FireFox]

They will always need fans especially if the chip is overclockable, maybe in the next decade if we can make chips out of graphene then passive cooling might be good enough but we'll see.

 

UNLESS EVERYONE WANT'S TO USE INTEL ATOM'S :P

[codytappen]

He means without a heatsink or any cooling apparatus at all.

Some modern ARM chips can run with no cooling apparatus and most with tiny bits of metal. So again, it's done commonly right now.

[Blade of Grass]

I don't think we'll ever get close to cooler-less systems in this life time, And there isn't enough surface area on a CPU for it to be effective, especially as they get smaller.

[D3MON]

no heatsinks in pc's, likely never (again unless casings are considered as conductive cooling), manufactures would rather make more powerful faster cpus that drive more and more software so you can more easily share pictures of your dog to your auntie in australia on holiday, look at new smartphones, we already have 9 billion apps that we don't really need and faster phones to drive them, i maintain that a cortex a8 is enough for most people and a dual core 1ghz a9/a15 is enough for tech-heads but it doesn't stop us buying 1.9ghz quad core phones which will like our desktops mostly reside at 10% load for 90% of the time.

for phones we need better batteries, slimmer OS's and more efficient (not faster) processors.
for pc's what we need is quieter, more compact, more efficient and portable......we only really need laptops.
or a home theatre pc using the case to passively cool a haswell 4570s and a 7970 for gaming
or if you do video rendering and need more power than that a matx board with a 3.5ghz 8 core 16 thread xeon and 2 tesla based quadro's shouldn't hold you back.
only the latter really needs a fan and it's not so much what we want/need its what the company's want us to want.

[ajoy39]

the rasberry pi doesn't have any heatsinks on it. Granted the CPU is covered by the RAM but I wouldn't exactly call that cooling. 

[Lycr]

There was no heatsink or fan on the CPU in my Commodore64, so I guess the answer is - sometime in the 1980's. :)

(There's not much of a cooler on the CPU in your smart-phone either.)

 

As far as I know, older, ceramic cpus didn't have heatsinks. (eg: intel 386 DX, as pictured here) Because I remember watching a video on cpus and this guy talked about the old ceramics, and how they got really hot.

[Maverik5124]

I guess we will get faster cpus without the need for cooling (look at smartphones) but there will probably always be cpus with active cooling because they are able to provide a lot more power.

[Snickerzz]

Ok, if EA owns the world then we aren't going to have cpus, we are going to be in the dark ages :-:

[Noupoi]

It seems that the heat output of each tier of processor doesn't really change.

 

While power efficiency of all processors have been increasing, manufacturers are always going to be packing more transistors into the die for improved performance, but also negating the heat benefits. This means that while there is a general in power efficiency, and you'll eventually get the performance of what is considered a high end part today in a small and cool component in the future, by that time, it will no longer be considered high performance. High end parts will always require some form of cooling.

 

This can be seen today. As someone mentioned in the thread, the processor on the Raspberry Pi does not require a heatsink, and is approximately equal to performance to a Pentium 3 chip, which was a fully fledged desktop processor when it was released.

[IdeaStormer]

the rasberry pi doesn't have any heatsinks on it. Granted the CPU is covered by the RAM but I wouldn't exactly call that cooling. 

 

Ras Pi is a current computer but there are many more, people need to look things up before starting such a trivial thread.

[unidentical]

Not in my desktop, I wouldn't allow it.

 

Even if I underclocked it I'd still have a beast cooler. Why? Because it's right and proper, that's why.

[D3MON]

just had a thought (celebrations), if they made a thicker heatspreader with finely cnc's fins (or an extruded IHS) that could be the heatsink BUT it would be integral, okay this wouldn only be useful on lower end applications somewhere between the rasberry pi and a laptop.
i bet if they used haswell architecture on the same 14nm fab but with a much lower gpu part you could have a dual core 1.2ghz chip in your phone with the aluminium case being a heatsink much like the htc linus uses and it'd blow away anything we have today. look at apples iphone 5, 1.2ghz dual core, very powerful.
....and i don't like htc, apple, intel (much) but i can't deny good technology.

for refferance an intel atom at 1.6ghz is 45nm and 47M transistors
haswell arch, double the cores half the process 1.2ghz=allot less power usage

[1wsx10]

just had a thought (celebrations), if they made a thicker heatspreader with finely cnc's fins (or an extruded IHS) that could be the heatsink BUT it would be integral, okay this wouldn only be useful on lower end applications somewhere between the rasberry pi and a laptop.

i bet if they used haswell architecture on the same 14nm fab but with a much lower gpu part you could have a dual core 1.2ghz chip in your phone with the aluminium case being a heatsink much like the htc linus uses and it'd blow away anything we have today. look at apples iphone 5, 1.2ghz dual core, very powerful.

....and i don't like htc, apple, intel (much) but i can't deny good technology.

for refferance an intel atom at 1.6ghz is 45nm and 47M transistors

haswell arch, double the cores half the process 1.2ghz=allot less power usage

this would be all good and well if it weren't for the limitation on batteries... look at the iphone 5, the battery life on that is dwindling to say the least compared to its predecessors, and not everyone carry's around 2 spare battery packs like slick.

[nishank93]

I took this question as 'how long before CPUs run without any heatsink (active or passive)?' It is already happening, in phones for example. But, in a mainstream PC I think it will be a very long time before that starts happening because there will always be a top of the line CPU with freaking amazing performance and that would mean heat.

[1wsx10]

never because cpus will have to have some sort of cooling because they get too hot

... the question is will they become so efficient that they dissipate a more heat than they create with no external heatsynk/fan/cooler of any kind.

 

and the answer is yes... take a look at the raspberry pi, that thing has a cpu, ram and gpu all in one spot and runs with nothing but the pcb its on :)

 

also here is a video of a more powerful cpu running without any form of cooling other than its top plate (and a negligible amount of liquid):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAqlA9EJ4ME&feature=endscreen&NR=1

 

see how long they last? you can't say they're not running without any kind of cooling at the end there!

[D3MON]

this would be all good and well if it weren't for the limitation on batteries... look at the iphone 5, the battery life on that is dwindling to say the least compared to its predecessors, and not everyone carry's around 2 spare battery packs like slick.

dual cortex a9@1ghz is as much processor you need at the moment, it didnt stop them making 1.5ghz quad core a9's despite the fact no phone apps are THAT demanding and dont use more than 4 cores, it doesnt make sence to make a phone with 300% the power requirement but only 50% more battery but they do it...and people buy it

a15's are much better and id now say a dual cortex 15 @1ghz is all you need its faster than a9's with less power usage, problem solved and the way things are going 5in phones will soon be normal and most people dont have a problem with a phone thats only 2mm thicker, it still fits in an average jean pocket, and doesnt cut into you as ive heard some people say.

5in 720p ips screen (half the pixels to render=nearly double the frame rate, still plenty of pixel density (293), we dont hear people complaining about the iphone 4s screen (326) and more than my lg optimus 3d (217) which you really have to try to see pixels on

powerful dual core 1.2ghz cpu (galaxy S4 equivilant)

6400MaH battery (not much to ask considering the galaxy note 2 has it available)

adreno based graphics chip

imagine having a 5in screen playing games perfectly smoothing (60ish fps) on a crisp screen for hours without worrying about battery

[1wsx10]

dual cortex a9@1ghz is as much processor you need at the moment, it didnt stop them making 1.5ghz quad core a9's despite the fact no phone apps are THAT demanding and dont use more than 4 cores, it doesnt make sence to make a phone with 300% the power requirement but only 50% more battery but they do it...and people buy it

a15's are much better and id now say a dual cortex 15 @1ghz is all you need its faster than a9's with less power usage, problem solved and the way things are going 5in phones will soon be normal and most people dont have a problem with a phone thats only 2mm thicker, it still fits in an average jean pocket, and doesnt cut into you as ive heard some people say.

5in 720p ips screen (half the pixels to render=nearly double the frame rate, still plenty of pixel density (293), we dont hear people complaining about the iphone 4s screen (326) and more than my lg optimus 3d (217) which you really have to try to see pixels on

powerful dual core 1.2ghz cpu (galaxy S4 equivilant)

6400MaH battery (not much to ask considering the galaxy note 2 has it available)

adreno based graphics chip

imagine having a 5in screen playing games perfectly smoothing (60ish fps) on a crisp screen for hours without worrying about battery

yes that would be totally awesome, i hate short battery life because it completely eliminates long-term gaming, having the phone idle and pick up calls now and then is not what smartphones do these days and yet, that's all you can do if you expect the battery to last 6 hours.i would love to have a company replace half a centermeter of space on the back for some battery, phones are getting unreasonably thin with unreasonably little battery life so they should make bigger batteries with the same size case as the chips get smaller, it only makes sense.

[PBaines]

Does the CPU in your phone require a fan? ;)

[D3MON]

OK i think we've covered the fact the ras pi (which isnt much of a pc...) and phones dont need fans, come on people lets see if we can come out with something completely new.
i still like the idea of the IHS being extruded with fins on it, could make it a ltitle bit more possible, even better if it was submerged in mineral oil with oil flowing over it enough i dont see why it wouldnt be possible if the TDP was low enough.
on another note, anyone seen a gt210/6450/5450/4550 gpu chip? theyre tiny, won day we'll have something similar in our phones (dreams)

[christoi]

Unless we move to a completely different implementation and design where the speeds aren't limited by heat, I don't think we would see any desktop CPU's that don't come with a heatsink.

 

The main reason why CPu's are still clocked in the 3Ghz range for the last ~10 years is because increasing it further creates too much heat. If there's a breakthrough in power and heat efficiency due to whatever reason, manufacturers would probably start by making use of the thermal headroom to improve further performance.

[Tr3vor]

The last chips that I remember being passively cooled were the early Pentium chips <200mhz. Everything new than that has a fan, I don't see it changing any time soon, since chips seem to keep getting hotter and hotter.