Air Cooling with MEMS Technology Could Make Phones Faster

A new "Fan-on-a-chip" product could make active air cooling of phone processor chips more practical and common, giving higher-end phones faster sustained performance. The new "XMC-2400 µCooling" (microcooling) chip from xMEMS acts like a fan to move heat away from a processor chip using forced air, but is just 1mm thin. This makes it far more practical to integrate into a phone design than a traditional fan, like some current gaming phones have. Advanced processor and graphics chips have temperature sensors and automatically throttle down performance to avoid overheating. Active cooling systems can keep this from happening, improving sustained performance, such as during gaming sessions. The XMC-2400 uses the same chip technology as MEMS speaker elements used in some earbuds. MEMS technology is already common in many phone components, including microphones, accelerometers, and gyroscopes.