3 ms·
> Due to a phenomenon known as Joule heating – an unavoidable consequence of how they operate at a fundamental level – chips dissipate almost exactly the amount
by gblargg 5mo ago
> Due to a phenomenon known as Joule heating – an unavoidable consequence of how they operate at a fundamental level – chips dissipate almost exactly the amount of power they consume as heat.
I don't think you'll ever make a chip not dissipate as heat the energy you feed into it for operation. Where else would it go?
- oakwhiz 5mo agoIt could go into the information directly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle
- kilobaud 5mo agoI think the main idea is that MOSFET chips don’t sink or source much current on their own (“fundamental” seeming to mean the way that current does not propagate into the gates, and most designs only really draw current during transitions) OTOH some chips (amplifiers for example) may indeed have current flowing through them and therefore the power consumption of the “chip” would equal the sum of heat loss and output power. At least that’s my interpretation of the framing “how they operate at a fundamental level”. I could be wrong too, I’m not a working EE
- addaon 5mo agoLEDs are chips; some of the energy goes to light (which will be heat eventually, but not necessarily locally). Some chips also have measurable piezo effects, turning some energy into sound. And of course various data storage technologies (eg floating gate flash) have higher potential energy in one state than the other, so write operations may take more energy than is converted to heat.