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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (41613)	11/17/1998 12:12:00 AM
From: Paul Engel	Respond to of 1575328

Tenchusatsu - Re: " I have a hard time believing that the problem is as simple as adding a high-tech air conditioner right onto the package itself.." You are correct to believe this. First, cryogenic cooling of a CPU in a PC produces surfaces with temperatures at 0 ºC or much lower - depending upon the temperature control and regulation. At these temperatures, moisture condensation occurs and presents an enormous problem if not dealt with. Moisture condensing on a PC board can cause leakage currents to occur - even short circuits. Moisture present on package leads can cause corrosion of the leads - EVEN if the leads are gold plated since solder flux trace contaminants in the presence of moisture and electrical bias can cause dendritic growths - metal plating, essentially, - between closely spaced, opposite biased leads or pins. This can result in dead shorts occurring. As you "felt", simply adding cryo cooling to a CPU chip can be fraught with not-so-obvious technical (metallurgical) problems due to unintended consequences. Paul