“Intel, AMD and IBM could soon been shipping water-cooled processors to boost clock frequencies without putting extra strain on notebook, desktop and server heat management systems, courtesy of a new technique developed by Stanford University spin-off company Cooligy.

Using water to cool over-clocked processors is nothing new, but Cooligy has taken the technique a stage further: it has figured out a way to implement water cooling directly within the chip itself.

Cooligy’s approach - called Active Micro-Channel Cooling (AMC) - involves scoring hundreds of tiny channels into a silicon layer placed on the upper surface of the chip package. Water - or any other fluid, for that matter - circulates through the channels drawing heat away from the core.

The company claims AMC can cool a CPU by up to 1000W per square cm. The best a passive system can manage, it says, is 250W per square cm.”