Intel Corporation

Driven by Moore's Law, semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel are able to continually produce new innovative products that deliver increasing levels of performance and other user-valued capabilities. However, as more transistors are packed into a smaller area, power density increases, creating challenges for cooling and thermal management. Efficient power delivery and thermal management are critical as systems become smaller and more capable with every generation of new computing and communication products. In 1983, the Intel ® 286 microprocessor consisted of 134,000 transistors. Intel microprocessors today can contain over 1 Billion transistors (see Figure 1). Similarly, the computing power of the PC has increased by factors far exceeding 1,000X since the early 1980s. If the power consumed by an average PC had increased at the same rate, each one would require a 250-300 kilowatt (kW) power supply. Instead, for an average PC, the power consumed has stayed largely the same over the last 20 years despite dramatic improvements in PC performance and computing ability [1, 2]. Figure 1: Growth in the number of transistors in an Intel CPU The active power for a CMOS device is defined as: P = CV2f, where P = active power needed fo