dissipation power

Wherever electricity is transported, losses occur that are reflected in heat. They are undesirable, often cannot be reduced and are converted into heat.

The problem of the power loss to be dissipated applies equally to supply networks and communication networks, as well as to electronic components and semiconductor technology. The resulting losses are converted into dissipated heat. As semiconductor devices become more compact and are manufactured with ever higher integration densities, the power dissipation of integrated circuits( IC) is concentrated in an increasingly smaller area. It results from the total transmitted power minus the useful power.

Since the power dissipation increases quadratically with the supply voltage, the supply voltage of memory chips and central processing units( CPU) is reduced. For example, chips with a supply voltage of 2 V have a fourfold higher power dissipation compared to chips with a supply voltage of 1 V.

Memory chips such as XDR DRAMs are already available for supply voltages of 1.2 V, and CPUs have also made some progress in this respect. Whereas years ago the power dissipation of central processing units for desktops was 100 W and above, it has been reduced to around 5 W for mobile devices thanks to ULV processors, Ultra Low Voltage. ULV processors are designed for supply voltages of between 1.05 V and 1.15 V. To prevent the semiconductor components, which are subject to specified limit temperatures, from being permanently damaged, the resulting power dissipation, which is referred to as Thermal Design Power ( TDP) in central processing units (CPU), is dissipated via cooling.