Superconductor Technologies Inc, the Santa Barbara, California high-temperature superconductor specialist that has been working on related cryogenic subsystems, told itsannual meeting that its cryogenic cooling system has shown the ability to increase workstation speeds by 30%. The company has been working with Sun Microsystems Inc, the Ross Technology unit of Fujitsu Ltd, and privately-held nChip Inc to evaluate high-speed cryocooled workstations using a hyperSparc subassembly under a US Navy contract. The company had been hoping to demonstrate a 40% speed improvement compared with room temperature working, but the 30% is encouraging enough to persuade the company to form a strategic business unit to market the cooling system to the workstation market, starting next year. There is no doubt that each new generation of computer chips is getting hotter and hotter, and the associated problems from heat dissipation are becoming more challenging, the company says: We can use our small system, developed for our superconducting products, to cool the high-speed chips and solve the heat problems, and at the same time significantly increase computer speeds. It reckons that the 30% gain is just the beginning and says it expects to achieve a further increase in speed without redesigning or optimising the chips for higher speeds, and that if the chips are optimised to run at colder temperatures, the speed increase could be as high as 100% to 200%. The firm sees the market for cryogenic chip cooling systems exceeding $300m by 1998.
