Slashdot Log In
Apple Hints At Future Liquid-Cooled Laptops
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Dec 04, 2008 04:25 AM
from the cool-me-in-the-water dept.
from the cool-me-in-the-water dept.
Lumenary7204 writes "According to the Register, Apple recently received US Patent Application No. 20080291629 for a 'liquid-cooled portable computer.' The filing describes a system where a 'pump ... coupled to the heat pipe is configured to circulate the liquid coolant through the heat pipe.' All claims of obviousness aside (after all, PC enthusiasts have been using liquid and phase-change cooling for years), the existence of the patent application seems to indicate that laptop manufacturers are in agreement with physicists and engineers who say we are running up against the practical limits of air-cooling such compact pieces of equipment."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
This won't fly. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This won't fly. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:This won't fly. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:This won't fly. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:This won't fly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:This won't fly. (Score:4, Informative)
What could possibly go wrong?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1464395&tstart=990 [apple.com]
It's another built-in-defect waiting to happen, along with the dodgy Nvidia GPUs in Macbook Pros, those heat-deaths of HDDs in Macbooks etc...
Parent
Re:This won't fly. (Score:5, Insightful)
You hit the nail on the head. Everybody has, at one point or another, experienced liquid leaking from their water heater, or air conditioner, or car radiator. It creates a mess, an expensive repair, and a shorter operational lifespan versus an air-cooled device. ("My g5 liquid cooled computer...is leaking and dripped onto my power supply. I am looking at a little under a thousand dollars for repair...with less than 2 years of actual use.")
I'd much prefer choosing the air-cooled PC with no moving parts (except a fan), even if that means I only run at 3000 megahertz instead of 6000. All I do is surf the net or stream Heroes off nbc.com, and I'm happy to take a slightly slower "engine" inside my computer (just as my Honda Insight only has 67hp). I don't need a lot of power for my daily routine and neither do most people.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Your Insight is water-cooled. Therefore, you should sell it [to me] and buy an air-cooled VW Beetle.
: )
Re:This won't fly. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well the person I quoted in my post only had his computer for 3 years, as have many other PowerMac owners, and it already started leaking in just that short timespan, so your attempt to dismiss the problem so casually is an epic fail.
As for my avoidance of constant upgrades:
My Commodore 64 is over twenty years old, one of my laptops is about ten years, my second laptop is five, and my desktop PC is also five. If any of them were liquid-cooled, they'd likely be dead by now due to fluid leakage. Liquid cooling shortens lifespans faster than air cooling. Why do I keep things so long? One reason is because there are those of us who were not born with a silverspoon in our mouths, and therefore we have to economize and make things last rather than upgrade every other year.
The second reason is the same reason why I drive a 67 horsepower car; I don't need a pocket rocket either to get to work, or to surf the net. I don't buy into the whole "conspicuous consumption" idea that many Americans (including yourself) like to embrace. I think it's foolish and a waste and the key reason why our economy is hovering on the brink of a second Depression. You casually dismiss this as "fearmongering" but I call it intelligent budgeting. I'm proud to say that I have no debt; can you say the same?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>pompous author.
Where's the "doesn't know how to make an argument without ad hominem attacks" tag?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are liquid coolers now being sold that are fully sealed rather than sealed using gaskets, and the potential for a leak with such systems is much smaller than traditional gasket coolers, however, there is usually no way to inspect, clean, or add coolant to these (they would need to be replaced).
Looking at the patent, I see two differences to traditional liquid cooling that could be the entire basis of the patent. Claim 16: metal particles in the coolant, and Claim 19: a cold plate (which could mean ma
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Apple will build a user-accessible liquid coolant tank and will sell small bottles with coolant of different colours and scents.
Apple Juice?
Re:This won't fly. (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong question.
Will it blend?
Parent
Re:This won't fly. (Score:5, Funny)
'Hit' the ground??? This is an Apple laptop; the reality distortion field will morph the pavement as it descends.
Parent
Re:This won't fly. (Score:5, Funny)
No more mess than the liquid that will leak out of you if you hit the ground when flying.
Parent
Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Oh my! (Score:5, Funny)
"pump ... coupled to the heat pipe is configured to circulate the liquid coolant through the heat pipe."
Why does it seem like that should be followed by 'and shipped to your door in plain, discreet packaging'?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't everything get "shipped to your door in plain, discreet packaging" these days? I've never bought a photographic lens and had it arrive in anything other than a plain brown cardboard box wrapped in the courier's shipping bag.
Seriously, is there some company out there that incurs extra costs by shipping its goods in packaging marked "VIBRATOR INSIDE"?
Re: (Score:2)
I guess this is close:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1888 [dealextreme.com]
1 cent for no logos, it does include other benefits to though.
Liquid Nitrogen (Score:3, Interesting)
The university of Chalmers in Sweden has been experimenting with liquid Nitrogen for some time now and their solution (while not cheap) is extremely effective for cooling of small electronic devices. Give it some time and I'm sure this will made it into mainstream (and Abble may very possibly claim that they invented the thing as well).
Re:Liquid Nitrogen (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt it - that sounds like a miniture cryobomb to me. Depressurising liquid nitrogen (i.e. exposed to air) cools very, very fast, so if the device was ruptured it could cause some very nasty cold burns. This might be applicable in some limited circumstances, but the risk of costly litigation is too high for the general consumer market.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember when the T-1000 crashed into a liquid nitrogen truck and shattered? Imagine that happening to your lap.
Re:Liquid Nitrogen (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Bad terminology (Score:3, Informative)
They should double check their terminology. Heat pipes are defined to be a closed system whereby the working fluid circulates by convection and capillary action.
"Heat pipes contain no mechanical moving parts..."
Or just a bad understanding of Apple? (Score:2)
And that's probably what they're going to do, too.
Remember, Mr. Jobs absolutely hates noisy computers. He wants them to run as quietly as possible. Fans are kept to an absolute minimum, tolerated only when absolutely necessary and verboten otherwise.
Substitute "pump" for "fan," and you can see where this is going. They'll want a system as
aren't we beyond the limits of air cooling? (Score:5, Interesting)
my father has got one of those huge 19" laptops with a 3ghz+ pentium 4 processor and geforce 5xxx graphic chipset
unless we put something under it so there is some room between the laptop and the table, it completely overheats as soon as i stress it (a simple game that a pc like that hsould easily handle. Diablo 2 or so) -_-. even with some room under it, it only takes a few minutes for it to get seriously hot (you can actually feel from the outside of the laptop where the hot spots are)
i wonder what ever made them create such stupid laptops (and what made my father buy one -_-)
Battery Usage? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a HP laptop which runs fairly hot, but that's still better, as far as I'm concerned, than carrying around a heavy pump that uses up the battery.
Of course, if they manage to make it more compact and energy efficient than fans, all the power to them. I would still worry about it leaking and destroying my laptop, though.
Since Apple is trying for a patent for all types of mobile devices on this, it would be particularly interesting to see a water cooled iPhone...
Re:Battery Usage? (Score:5, Funny)
Water cooled iPhones? I call prior art [google.com]!
Parent
Liquid metal means no moving parts (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
While it is certianly true that pumping water requires more energy than blowing air you have to move a lot less water so I wouldn't be surprised if they could make the water cooling rig only two or three times more energy intensive than current air cooling.
I know from keeping fish that water pumps use very little power. Even my monster pump that shifts FSM knows how may litres of water an hour only uses about 50W. I also have a tiny pump that is still way larger than you would use for a laptop that draws
Re: (Score:2)
prior art? (Score:5, Interesting)
doesn't Hitachi's watercooled laptop [geek.com] from a few years ago count as "prior art"?
Re: (Score:2)
That's as pathetic as the idiots who use "M$".
A note on semantics (Score:2)
One doesn't "receive" a patent application; one "makes" one. In the initial application, which is what this is, the claims can say literally anything the applicant wants; during the examination process the applicant can (and usually does) modify the claims to meet the objections of the examiner (who -- in theory, anyway -- is ensuring that anything claimed is supported by text in the original specification portion of the application, and that the resulting invention meets the statutory requirements for uti
Re:A note on semantics (Score:5, Interesting)
After reading the specification, it sure sounds to me like a description of a prototype product on which Apple is trying to get patent protection. Some of the specifics in the specification are just too, well, specific -- for example, the description in [0034] of the use of a Venturi tube, or the parenthetical comment in [0035] about the use of ultrasonic frequencies in the membrane pump.
Possibly the biggest detail, though -- and the one bit of novelty I think I see in the specification that could form the basis of an allowable patent claim -- is the comment in [0041] that the heat may be coupled to the outside world by a plate behind the display. This is exactly the kind of novelty nugget -- assuming it really is novel -- to which I referred in my earlier comment. One way Apple could get an allowance on this application, after the initial rejection by the examiner, is to include this feature in an independent claim; the invention would then be a liquid-cooled laptop with the heat exchanger behind the display. (Of course, in that case your liquid-cooled laptop that doesn't have the heat exchanger behind the display wouldn't infringe on the resulting patent.)
As I said, assuming that it is a novel feature. PC design is not my specialty. Has anyone seen art before May 22, 2007 -- the filing date of this application -- describing a liquid-cooled laptop with the heat exchanger behind the display?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think they necessarily "agree" (Score:5, Interesting)
ORLY patents serve only two purposes: One being that you have to pay through the nose if you want to do what is the obvious next step in development. And today it seems the logical next step in cooling for mobiles is liquid (as it has been for non mobile computers for, I don't know, a few decades?).
The other purpose is to simply leave your competition behind because they must not use what you patented.
So, of course, Apple is the good guy here, because they force the developers of laptops to come up with new, inspired ideas because they blocked the path of the most obvious one?
No, wait, ain't it usually MS blocking paths and Apple coming up with something fancy? I'm confused here...
Apple is a corporation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is a corporation. Corporations are by law required to be psychopathic money-hungry bastards (that's what the SEC regulations for public companies amount to). Don't attribute human emotions and motivations to corporations... corporations reflect ANY human attributes only in spite of what they are.
Setting that aside, the third reason for a patent is to provide defensive ammunition against the OTHER psychopathic money-hungry bastards that might use THEIR patent against you.
Parent
Wrong Direction (Score:5, Insightful)
With the rise of netbooks, I think the laptop market is moving more towards smaller and more efficient, rather than big and powerful. I'd much rather see an ultra-portable Apple laptop that needs _no_ cooling assistance and gets 12-18 hours on a basic battery (so I can leave the power brick at home!) than another high-wattage crotch burner in the marketplace.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't end well last time (Score:2, Insightful)
This didn't end well last time with most of the G5 Power Macs ending up leaking their coolant and destroying their insides.
Wow, so will it also finally ... (Score:2)
green? (Score:2, Interesting)
Enthusiasts? (Score:3, Informative)
Enthusiasts have been using liquid cooling for years? Apple has also been using Liquid cooling for years! The two dual PowerPC G5's threw so much heat that they had no choice really. And it's not the first actively cooled system Apple has made. Fourteen years ago the PowerMac 8100/110 had a 110 MHz PowerPC 601 with a Peltier-Junction (thermoelectric) cooler.
Re:Water? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I think you mean molten ice.
Jupiter's moon Europa also has a core of molten ice. I it even erupts occasionally from volcanos, as Europan lava.
Thousands of people die each year from molten ice inhalation.
Ask your congressman to ban molten ice!
-