My Old Employer on Slashdot
May 3, 2005 – 10:49 amMy last semester as an undergraduate at The University of Texas at Austin and the summer following (before I came to Caltech), I worked for a company called NanoCoolers. I did some CFD modeling of heat sinks designed to sit on laptop CPUs that were part of a liquid metal heat exchanger (an alternative to the most commonly used method of air cooling a CPU with a big fan and a heat sink or the less common method of having a water-based heat exchanger).
It turns out someone submitted an article to Slashdot about NanoCoolers, and it’s really interesting to read the comments knowing what I do about that particular cooling technology. I signed a non-disclosure agreement when I started working at NanoCoolers, and I would have to pull my copy of it to see for what duration of time I was prohibited from speaking about the details of the technology. As a result, I have refrained from posting any comments on Slashdot clarifying people’s (many) misconceptions about the technology.
If you’re curious about using liquid metals to cool computer processors, wander over to Slashdot (or probably better just visit the NanoCoolers web page, though I haven’t seen the page in a while). Be careful reading the comments on Slashdot, though. Many people are terribly misinformed (or feel very comfortable making wildly unsubstantiated claims even about basic material science and the like).
4 Responses to “My Old Employer on Slashdot”
I’m gonna assume that one of the things you can’t talk about is what liquid metal alloy they intend to use for these coolers, right? It apparently isn’t mentioned in the article, although there is plenty of speculation as to what it is (Hg or Ga/In/Sn).
By Adam on May 3, 2005 at 3:08 pm
Unfortunately, you have assumed correctly. In fact, if I had been prevented from speaking about any one thing, the liquid metal composition would likely have been it. Regardless, it’s fun to read the speculation.
By jjk on May 4, 2005 at 1:26 am
Hey Jeff,
How is it going? Slashdot was pretty interesting. Kind of neat to see what the internet is capable of these days.
Hope all is well and you are studying your ass off.
Best of luck.
By Mick Wilcox on May 10, 2005 at 2:08 pm
Hey Mick. Long time, no hear my friend. I imagine you guys at NanoCoolers knew about the Slashdot thing pretty early on, with the ramp in network traffic. Things are going well out here. Staying very busy with the whole school and research routine. It sounds like things are going well there at NanoCoolers. I hope life is treating you well.
By jjk on May 10, 2005 at 9:22 pm