Researchers from the IIT Bombay and C-MET, Pune have proposed using Low-Temperature Co-fired Ceramic (LTCC) as an efficient alternative to conventionally used copper for making cold plates.
Cooling of Supercomputers
- High-Performance Computing systems (HPCs) or supercomputers resort to cooling using liquid coolants and cold plates that dissipate heat.
- In liquid-cooled devices, liquid coolants like deionised water are circulated through system to remove excess heat.
- Cold plates are used like a heat sink transferring heat from circuit components into the coolant liquid and copper is presently the preferred material due to high thermal conductivity.
Use of LTCC for cold plates
- LTCC is a technology used to manufacture ceramic substrates for circuits.
- Substrates are materials on which electrical interconnections are printed resistors, inductors, etc. are mounted.
- It facilitates 3D circuit packing, making designs more compact and efficient than conventional PCB (Printed Circuit Boards).
- LTCC can effectively cool microprocessor chips in supercomputers.
About Supercomputers
- Supercomputers are largest and more powerful computers that have multiple central processing units grouped into ‘compute nodes’.
- Their performance is measured in Floating-Point Operations Per Second (FLOPS).
- Application of Supercomputers: Scientific research, Space exploration, Weather Forecasting and Climate Modelling, Genomic Sequencing, etc.
India’s initiatives in Supercomputing
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