Sub-ambient cooling

Sub-ambient cooling

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Most PC cooling solutions cool your CPU/GPU/memory using fans or water that exchange the generated heat with the surrounding air. This means you can never cool the components to any lower temperature than the surrounding ambient air temperature.

There are people who push those boundaries to hyper-low temperatures by pouring liquid nitrogen or other hyper-cool liquids into specially designed heatsinks; but it introduces a new set of issues. A big issue for cooling below ambient temperature is condensation.

As soon as a surface is cooler than the surrounding air temperature dew point, then water from the air may start forming as condensation on the surface. We see this every summer on the sides of iced drinks. As anyone with electronics experience knows, water and electricity don’t mix.

Many people have experimented with sub-ambient cooling solutions before. The latest is EKWB with their EK-QuantumX Delta TEC EVO water block. Instead of using just a normal water block connected to a radiator, this solution uses a Thermoelectric Cooler (TEC) with a controller that then dissipates that heat through a radiator.

It’s an interesting, and surprisingly complex problem.

Cooling chips with Silicon not fans

Cooling chips with Silicon not fans

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Frore Systems has developed a cooling chip it calls AirJet that sits on top of a heat-generating chip and cools it without the need for mechanical fans. It’s 2.8mm thick and uses pulsating inlets to suck air into it and exhaust it out the sides.

The AirJet Mini looks like a credit card, and measures 41.5mm long by 27.5mm wide and 2.8mm thick. It can remove 5.25W of heat while consuming just 1W with a very quiet 21 dBA of noise. The AirJet Pro for x86 is a bit larger, naturally. It measures 71.5 mm by 31.5mm at the same 2.8mm thickness. It can exhaust 10.75W of heat while using just 1.75W.

The mechanism works via membranes inside that vibrate at ultrasonic frequencies. This vibration sucks air into inlets at the top of the AirJet. Once inside the device, air is then transformed into “pulsating jets” as the air removes the heat from the heat spreader. It is eventually exhausted out of the sides via integrated spouts.

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Building a video wall

Building a video wall

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Live Production Mastery shows how they make a 90 foot long, 17 foot tall (56 panels wide, 10 panels tall) 120fps video wall. It is run by 4 Unreal engine computers and they include all kinds of interesting details about power, networking, mounting, etc. Everything you would need to build your own.

Luxury cars in Portland

Luxury cars in Portland

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Ever want to buy a $100,000+ Porsche, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, or other semi-super car in Portland? Or maybe you just want to look at how the richer half lives.

If so, you might look at Grand Prix Motors in Portland. They have tons of interesting expensive cars to browse through on their website. They actually have what appears to be decent prices and move a good quantity of inventory so it’s always fun to browse through things you might never afford or want to actually spend your money on.

They also have some pretty wild cars that randomly migrate through their consignment sales section too for additional spice.

Science fiction to science reality?

Science fiction to science reality?

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Have you ever heard of a movie about an advanced AI based defense system that becomes sentient? After being handed full control, it expands on its original nuclear defense directives to assume total control of the world despite its creators’ orders to stop.

It’s not War Games or Terminator. Nope, this movie is from 1970 and it’s called Colossus: The Forbin Project and it’s available on Vimeo for free. Maybe give it a watch before it becomes reality.

Google AI Chip Design leads to a drama fueled trainwreck

Google AI Chip Design leads to a drama fueled trainwreck

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Who would think something like improving a chip design tool would cause the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) to get so out of hand it was called a “trainwreck” and an “ambush” of the presenters.

The crux of the clash was whether Google’s AI chip design layout solver was really better than those of humans or state-of-the-art algorithms. In the end, there was a firing and a wrongful termination lawsuit with Google, a team re-doing a years worth of work, ugly accusations and drama, and 2 AI researchers leaving a promising field of AI improved chip design due to the conflict.

The argument involved a lot of factors like comparing different chip placement algorithms, results of reinforced learning, initial placement bias, metrics of success such as wire length, annealing, and general benchmarks – but in the end resulted in a circus of accusations, lawsuits, and drama.

Read more about it here on the IEEE article

AI powered NPCs fill a city

AI powered NPCs fill a city

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Combining live voice recognition, voice synthesis, and an AI large language model, Replica Studios’ Smart NPCs for Unreal allows you to carry out real-time, non-scripted conversations with anyone on your virtual streets. You can even download the demo here and try it yourself (warning: it’s 25 gb!).

These fully simulated AI characters will respond to your live-spoken language in the demo. You can ask where they’re from, whether they believe in aliens, complement their clothes, what car they drive, get food recommendations, tell people you don’t like their haircut, ask for directions to the park (and they’ll give it to you and tell you to feed the pigeons), talk about their insurance plans, what crimes they have committed, start some rumors and conspiracy theories, and anything you can think of. It’s got a few quirky bits, but it’s pretty surreal.

If you think that’s crazy, also check out their AI powered voice actors. The amount of dynamic quality in their voices is pretty amazing. It is almost good enough to replace main character voice actors, but it sure could be used to fill out dozens and dozens of minor roles.

The original channel comes from Jeff Favignano:

The technological development of – Pencil Sharpeners

The technological development of – Pencil Sharpeners

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Who knew something as simple as pencil sharpeners had such a long history. The Awesomer put together this little collection of old-school pencil sharpeners from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s.

Or if you want, go for one of these over-engineered modern ones:

I can assure you that the Palomino Kum Point Pencil Sharpener is pretty awesome (newer model here, and the one with the tip sharpener here). I use it all the time.