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posted by martyb on Wednesday February 01 2017, @03:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the hot-stuff! dept.

Dan Zhao and Simone Fabiano at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics, Linköping University, have created a thermoelectric organic transistor. A temperature rise of a single degree is sufficient to cause a detectable current modulation in the transistor. The results have now been published in Nature Communications.

"We are the first in the world to present a logic circuit, in this case a transistor, that is controlled by a heat signal instead of an electrical signal," states Professor Xavier Crispin of the Laboratory of Organic Electronics, Linköping University.

The heat-driven transistor opens the possibility of many new applications such as detecting small temperature differences, and using functional medical dressings in which the healing process can be monitored.

It is also possible to produce circuits controlled by the heat present in infrared light for use in heat cameras and other applications. The high sensitivity to heat, 100 times greater than traditional thermoelectric materials, means that a single connector from the heat-sensitive electrolyte, which acts as sensor, to the transistor circuit is sufficient. One sensor can be combined with one transistor to create a "smart pixel."


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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 01 2017, @10:37PM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday February 01 2017, @10:37PM (#461819) Homepage Journal

    I was thinking more selective-like. Clocking down the cores based on heat and outright shutting down bits you could shut down and not bugger up anything running on it.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 01 2017, @11:07PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday February 01 2017, @11:07PM (#461833) Journal

    I'm pretty sure they already do that.

    https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/amd-zen-release-date-specs-prices-rumours [pcgamesn.com]

    The Ryzen processors also house hundreds of sensors to track and locally optimise the silicon to enable it to run at its fastest while still maintaining the lowest possible power draw. These sensors feed into the Pure Power and Precision Boost features, which deliver a huge amount of control to the CPU itself.

    Pure Power and Precision Boost work together to “dial up the frequency and dial down the power on each part of the chip, independently, in milliseconds.” This performance optimisation is aimed at making the changes to power and frequency as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible.

    Pure Power and Precision Boost are part of a 5-feature package AMD calls "SenseMi".

    Maybe a heat transistor could do the job better than the sensors, but I doubt the sensors have a huge power draw.

    (I expect Intel includes similar features, but I didn't see anything noted for Skylake or Kaby Lake)

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    • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday February 02 2017, @06:31AM

      by butthurt (6141) on Thursday February 02 2017, @06:31AM (#461895) Journal

      > (I expect Intel includes similar features [...]

      Someone (aznricepuff) on another Web forum wrote:

      TCC activation temperature: The temperature, measured at the CPU core(s), at which a PROCHOT# signal is sent. This is the signal that activates throttling of the CPU. In essence, the CPU will rapidly step down voltage and clock speed until temperature drops below the TCC activation temperature. If this doesn't work, the CPU will cycle the clock on and off repeatedly (effectively only remaining active a fraction of the time) to reduce temperatures.

      -- http://www.webcitation.org/6ny96bCxK [webcitation.org]