The Challenges of Electronic Cooling: Past, Current and Future

Abstract

This paper represents my personal recapitulation of my 4 decades of continuous involvement in all phases of electronic cooling, from conceptual design, through engineering development to product implementation. The cooling designs that we applied successfully in the past are reviewed chronologically. The challenges we are currently facing are also discussed and an attempt is made to forecast the challenges that will confront the electronics cooling community in the near and distant future. The paper includes a summary of IBM sponsored research spanning a period of 25 years at 12 universities on a wide range of topics related to electronic cooling technology.