keynote lecture:

thermal and energy management technologies for the next decade
– challenges and opportunities –

dr. suresh garimella

director, nsf cooling technologies research center
school of mechanical engineering and birck nanotechnology center
purdue university

from health care to education to security, almost every aspect of life has benefited from the silicon revolution. integrated circuits serve as the “brains” of nearly all engineered entities that require rapid acquisition, transfer, and interpretation of information. the continued evolution of electronics for the 21st century, however, requires a fundamental shift in perspective, coupled with major technical innovations at all scales, to manage the power generated by carrier transport and dissipated in the form of heat. on the other end of the spectrum, large computing systems such as data centers are facing an energy crisis caused by this increasing power demand, which is aggravated by the cooling systems requiring levels of energy that are comparable to that consumed for computing. tens of megawatts of power consumed by data centers stress the energy supply infrastructure and cause environmental concerns as well.

integrating ongoing advances at the micro- and nano-scales with system-level considerations is critical for achieving the desired performance and reliability, while at the same time supporting significant improvements in energy efficiency. approaches such as dynamic reconfiguration of computing jobs and on-demand, site-specific heat removal, supported by distributed sensing and control, are necessary.