IBM has unveiled a high-tech chip cooling system to allow heat from computers to be vented much more efficiently than with current technologies.

The technique is said to give a two-fold improvement in cooling over the current methods and will allow future processor speeds to be increased without the need for complex heat removing systems.

The technology works by drawing heat out of the chip through a tree branch system of channels of viscous paste, borrowed from natural flow examples such as leaves and blood circulation systems.

Without the channel style system, future computer chips could reach the same heat as the surface of the sun, about 6,000 degree centigrade.

Electronic products are capable of amazing things, largely because of the more powerful chips at their heart, says Bruno Michel, a chip cooling researcher at IBM’s Zurich lab, where the technology was developed.

'We want to help electronics makers keep the innovations coming. Our chip-cooling technology is just one tool at our disposal to help them do that,' he said.

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Further reading:

• How IT can reduce its power use
• Headway on low-energy chip
• Computers at risk from heat wave