All kidding aside, we may be the first media in China to use the “photolithography fan”.
I don’t know if you still remember that last year we wrote an article introducing a Silicon Valley startup called Frore Systems and the cooling chip they made using a lithography machine: AirJet Mini.
After I introduced the AirJet mini, many friends still expressed confusion. Isn’t it just a fan? Why does it use a photolithography machine?
First of all, we need to clarify that this “photolithography” is not that “photolithography”.
Generally speaking, photolithography is the process of carving circuits on silicon wafers to make chips. However, the photolithography used by AirJet is different. It does not carve silicon wafers, but something called Metallic Wafer.
therefore,This metal lithography machine does not carve out circuits, but tiny metal film structures. When voltage is applied to this film, it will start to vibrate, driving the surrounding air to flow.
I don't know if you have ever been lucky enough to be bitten on the back of your hand or cheek by a mosquito while you were awake (well, it doesn't seem so lucky) – if you have had this experience and felt it carefully at the time, you will find that the mosquito's wings will generate a tiny airflow that blows onto our hands or face.
This is probably what the “film vibration airflow” in the AirJet Mini feels like.
However, thanks to the “metal lithography machine”, AirJet Mini can integrate hundreds or thousands of such “mosquito wings” on a metal wafer, allowing quantitative changes to lead to qualitative changes, allowing these “wings” to vibrate together to generate a high-speed airflow.
How fast is it? The wind pressure blown out by this gadget can reach 1750Pa, which is almost the same as the industrial fan in my hand.
It's just outrageous. It's just outrageous.
However, our previous understanding of AirJet Mini stopped there. But when we visited the MWC exhibition in Shanghai a while ago, we found that the AirJet team actually came to the exhibition.
After some research, we learned more about AirJet's technical details, and accidentally became a “domestic exclusive”.
First, at the booth, they demonstrated the latest progress of this set of photolithography heat dissipation chips. The previous AirJet Mini was 2.8mm thick. With the team's hard work and improvement over the past two years, the thickness of the latest AirJet Mini Slim has been reduced to only 2.5mm, and an AirJet Mini Sport model that supports IP68 waterproof has been added.
The result is that the AirJet Mini's usage scenarios have become more extensive.
For example, it is used in PCIe 5.0 solid-state drives. As we all know, the latest PCIe 5.0 solid-state drives will have problems with overheating and speed reduction, which has spawned a bunch of abstract designs.
AirJet Mini can make SSDs thinner again.
In addition, sports cameras, professional cameras, mobile hard drives and other devices that used to heat up easily and had no better cooling solutions may benefit from the existence of “piezoelectric film” fans such as AirJet Mini in the future.
The engineers on site told us that the AirJet Mini not only has dust-proof treatment at the air inlet, but also has a special self-cleaning program – just like some of the current high-speed hair dryers, it can blow away the dust stuck in the filter through regular backblowing.
It should look something like this:
In this way, the computer is equivalent to having a cooling fan that never needs to be cleaned.
Therefore, many industrial manufacturers have set their sights on AirJet. I saw that they demonstrated a special computer used in mines, which used the AirJet Mini cooling chip.
But of course, these things are too far away from us. On their booth, I actually saw two Xiaomi 14s.
One of them is a mass-produced machine, and the other one was removed by their team with the camera removed and an AirJet Mini Slim inserted.
The result is that when the two devices ran the 3DMark stress test together, the Xiaomi 14 with a modified fan ran at about 5.5 degrees lower temperature.
I touched it on the spot. Although the back cover of Xiaomi 14 with the added heat dissipation chip was still tightly fitted without any bulges, the camera was sacrificed and a heat dissipation hole was drilled on the top of the lens DECO.
I feel like there is another type of mobile phone that can consider this solution, namely those gaming phones that already have built-in fans (Red Magic, I’m calling you!). After all, the AirJet Mini Slim is light and thin enough and does not need to be cleaned.
In fact, the mobile phone heat dissipation modification is a new thing this time. AirJet became famous abroad at the beginning because it collaborated with YouTube blogger LinusTechTip to modify a MacBook Air.
This machine was also on site, and it was made into a transparent version.
By stuffing three AirJet Minis into the original fanless M2 MacBook Air, its CineBench multi-core score increased by more than 700 points, and the MacBook Air instantly turned into a MacBook Pro.
And while the performance has been improved, the thickness of the entire machine has not changed at all.
Because I was very interested in their cooling chip, I had a great chat with them at the Frore Systems booth. In the end, they even invited us to help them rebuild a new laptop.
Then we inexplicably became the first self-media in China to actually use AirJet cooling chips in laptops.
That's probably the case. They also brought two Samsung Galaxy Book thin and light laptops to the exhibition which were not on display.
Because its main feature is its lightness and portability, this computer only has one fan and a single heat pipe.
Then FroreSystems engineers discovered that this traditional fan was about the same size as three AirJet Minis.
So they actually replaced the computer with 3 AirJet Minis.
Before the modification, the Galaxy Book with the original radiator kept “sawtoothing” when it was baked – the power consumption just exceeded 15W when the performance was released, and it would immediately drop to 12W due to overheating.
After switching to AirJet Mini, under the same test conditions, a performance release of nearly 16 W can be stably achieved.
After 30 minutes of stress testing, the temperature of the keyboard area of the machine using AirJet Mini barely increased, while the performance was more stable.
And this is even with the modified cooling system. Frore Systems engineers said that if the computer had been designed for AirJet from the beginning, the effect would have been even better.
Because we have an infrared camera, in addition to looking at the surface temperature, we also took a picture of the radiator area.
I originally wanted to see the temperature of the air outlet, but I accidentally captured three very outrageous thermal air currents.
The difference compared to traditional radiators is really huge. When I first saw this thermal image, it was like the earthlings in “The Three-Body Problem” seeing water droplets for the first time.
In fact, after hearing about the opportunity to have in-depth contact with AirJet's R&D team, I went to find friends who work in computer manufacturers to see what they think of AirJet.
It turned out that there were actually a few people interested in AirJet. Even my brother who is a product manager at a large notebook manufacturer took the opportunity to visit the Frore Systems booth at MWC and discovered three problems: noise, cooling efficiency, and cost.
So while participating in the renovation, I also asked these questions to the engineers at Frore Systems.
First, the noise problem of AirJet Mini: When we tested it, we found thatIf under heavy load, the Galaxy Book using the AirJet Mini will produce a slight whistling sound.
The explanation given by their engineers is that the noise is not emitted by the AirJet Mini itself, because the sound of the vibration of the film fan is ultrasonic and cannot be heard by human ears.
The noise can be heard because these computers have been “magically modified” – although the cooling fan has been replaced with AirJet Mini, the air outlet structure is built into the computer and has not been optimized for the high wind pressure of the AirJet Mini, so when the wind blows onto the heat dissipation port of the computer case, a “whistling” sound is emitted.
If the computer had been designed with a case specifically for the AirJet Mini from the beginning, this wouldn't be a problem.
Another is the heat dissipation efficiency of AirJet Mini:
Currently, each AirJet Mini can dissipate about 5.5W of CPU operating heat, but at the same time the AirJet Mini itself consumes an additional 1W of power.
For example, the modification of Samsung Galaxy Book this time used 3 AirJet Minis at once, so the computer needs to consume an additional 3W of power for heat dissipation.
Is this input-output ratio worthwhile?
Faced with such doubts, AirJet engineers explained,The 1W power consumption is only the peak power consumption, but daily use is different from baking, and the fan will not always work at full load.
They also added that because the power consumption performance of AirJet Mini is public, other computer manufacturers have previously raised questions.
A notebook manufacturer that cooperated with them even conducted tests directly in its internal laboratory.
The results showed that when using four AirJet Minis, which means a peak fan power of 4W, the laptop's battery life was reduced from the original 13 hours to 12.5 hours.
But considering the improvement in peak performance, the notebook manufacturer ultimately decided that the sacrifice was acceptable.
When the conversation got to this point, the engineer from Frore Systems suddenly said, “If we follow Frore's Law, we will save even more electricity in two years.”
This completely confused me: I knew Moore's Law, which was named after Intel's founder – as chip manufacturing process improves, the number of processor transistors doubles every two years.
But what is this Frore's Law in your company's name? Your fans also have to double in performance every two years?
As a result, they really have this ambition.
As we mentioned earlier, AirJet Mini is essentially a “metal wafer” engraved using a “metal lithography machine.”
Just like TSMC went from 7nm to 5nm and then to 3nm, Frore Systems has also been tinkering with its own “metal lithography machine” every year to enable it to improve its process technology.
Their current results are:Without changing the heat dissipation performance, the thickness of a single heat dissipation chip has been compressed from 2.8 mm to 2.5 mm. In two years, it may be compressed to 2.2 mm or 1.8 mm.
Or if the thickness is no longer compressed, then over time, a 1W heat dissipation chip this year may be able to dissipate 5.5W of heat, but two years later it may be able to dissipate 10W, and four years later it may be able to dissipate 20W.
Of course, this is all future planning.
At present, we can observe that The AirJet Mini cooling system can play its greatest value in products that have very high requirements for lightness and thinness, but the processor power consumption itself is not that outrageous: such as MacBooks and gaming phones.
Originally, there was no cooling solution for these devices: Apple did not install a fan on the MacBook Air at all, Samsung and LG installed very useless fans on their own thin and light notebooks; gaming phones either use small fans that are more decorative than practical, or hang a heavy semiconductor back clip on the back.
You also need to plug an additional charging cable into the back clip.
Then AirJet Mini appeared – a 2.5mm thick sheet can blow out 1750 Pa of wind pressure, a 2.8mm thick sheet can achieve IP68 waterproof, and it can also self-clean, so that the air duct never needs to be cleaned.
Moreover, the heat dissipation efficiency can be improved with process iteration.
After using a computer with modified cooling, I feel that the only problem preventing this thing from being widely promoted on high-end thin and light notebooks may be the cost – the cost of purchasing the AirJet Mini cooling system for manufacturers is about 3-5 times that of traditional fans.
But if Frore Systems is given some time to develop, costs can be lowered, and cooling efficiency can be improved, this solution will probably be a sure win.
Anyway, I am already looking forward to what game handhelds and gaming phones will look like after they all use AirJet Mini!