The continuous increase of the system power and the shrinking sizeof portables present increasing challenges in thermal management atcomponent and system level. Among the various cooling techniques, heatpipe technology is emerging as a cost-effective thermal design solutiondue to its excellent heat transport efficiency and capability. In thispaper, we start with the basics of heat pipes and review theirperformance, reliability and cost characteristics. The use of heat pipesin portables Is illustrated in the cooling of notebooks and subnotebooksusing the recently introduced 75 MHz Pentium processor in Tape CarrierPackage (TCP) with a design specification of approximately 6.5 W(depending on the system configuration) with Active Thermal Feedback(ATF). Tests were conducted using test boards and TCP thermal test diesin one reference notebook and sub-notebook. After the thermalcharacterization of TCP in the reference notebook and sub-notebook,three configurations using heat pipes were studied. In all three cases,results showed that the use of heat pipes enables the system to handlethe 6.5 W of CPU power with 4 W of board power. Although the study isconducted in notebooks and subnotebooks, the analyses of heat pipes andtheir usage are also applicable to other portables
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