the 5^th annual business & technology summit was held on august 17-18, 2005 in natick, ma. the summit was followed by a one day short course on liquid cooling.

this year’s summit had a record participation due to the importance of high heat flux in the electronics industry. many applications are reaching or have already reached the limits of conventional cooling. the summit provided a broad picture of the opportunities and challenges in this emerging segment of the market.

the exhibition area housed 22 suppliers who demonstrated their products. this area was open throughout the summit providing ample opportunities for the participants to learn about the latest in available technology. the simple table-top format has proven to be the most productive way to communicate with the audience without the headache of large and fancy booths.

as the need for liquid cooling grows so does the number of vendors who offer solutions for various parts of the liquid loop. some of the challenges that remains are:

1- getting vendors to publish meaningful performance data on their cold plates and heat exchangers. engineers in the thermal management field must insist on reliable and repeatable data from the vendors. the thermal engineers normally start with a required thermal resistivity and want to know what flow rate and pressure drop they must have in order to achieve the desired performance.

2- attaching copper cold plats to the die or the package continues to be the single most critical bottleneck in removing the heat.

3- leak-proof tubing is required and fortunately some vendors (notably itt) are working on it.

4- we need more pump vendors to enter the market providing low cost and reliable pumps.

5- the issues of filtering the coolant and dealing with corrosion problems need more attention

coolingzone is committed to work with the industry and its partners to find solutions to all of the above problems. we will be holding short courses on liquid cooling around the us and abroad in the future to educate the market about the opportunities and challenges in using liquid cooling. our next short course is planned for october 19, in santa clara, ca. work is underway to organize a course in europe soon.