Optimal Design and Control of CPU Heat Sink Processes

Chyi-Tsong Chen*1, Ching-Kuo Wu1 and Chyi Hwang2

1
Department of Chemical Engineering
Feng Chia University
Taichung 407, Taiwan
2
Department of Chemical Engineering
I-Shou University,
Kaoshiung 840, Taiwan
*
E-mail: ctchen@fcu.edu.tw

Abstract: This paper considers the optimal plate fin design and the control of CPU heat
sink processes. First, we apply a finite element method to investigate the heat transfer
phenomena of a heat sink process. To have a better heat dispersion performance, a real-
coded genetic algorithm is utilized to search for an optimal set of plate-fin shape
parameters. The objective function to be minimized is the entropy generation rate which
can take simultaneously the two major factors, heat transfer rate and air resistance, into
consideration for design. The comparison with existing method shows that the present
optimization scheme is able to achieve a better design for heat dispersion. To attenuate
environmental and time-varying disturbances, a direct adaptive control scheme is then
developed for the CPU heat sink process. It is based on using a bounded single neuron
controller (SNC) along with a parameter tuning algorithm to regulate the temperature of a
selected control point. Extensive comparisons of the SNC-based control performance with
the on-off control as well as a PI controller show that the proposed scheme provides
excellent control performance despite the existence of unexpected process uncertainties.

Keywords: Heat sink process, Optimal design and control, Real-coded genetic algorithm,
Single neuron controller, Parameter tuning algorithm, Partial differential equation system

1. INTRODUCTION considered in this paper. Extensive comparisons of

the proposed optimization scheme with existing
Due to the increment of clock speed, switching speed methods are carried out. With the optimally designed
and transistor density, the size of the central plate-fin air cooling systems, the second part
processing unit (CPU) becomes smaller but the implements a control system in the CPU heat sink
efficiency is getting higher. This inevitably leads to process in order to attenuate the negative effects of
the increase of heat generation rate per volume of the the environmental perturbations on the CPU
CPU. If the heat cannot be removed appropriately, the operation. A bounded single neuron controller (SNC)
CPU life can be greatly shorten and the overheat is applied along with a devised parameter tuning
situation can also damage the normal operation of the algorithm to regulate the fan speed adaptively. The
process (Bar-Cohen, 1999). A simplest and effective control performance of the SNC-based scheme is
way to improve the CPU heat dispersion is the use of compared with an on-off control and a PI controller.
the air cooling fins. In recent years the plate-fin
design for the CPU heat dispersion has received 2. DYNAMIC SIMULATION AND ANALYSIS
considerable attention and many design techniques OF THE CPU HEAT SINK PROCESS
have been proposed (Bejan and Morega, 1993;
Culham and Muzychka, 2000; Krueger and Bar- 2.1 Governing equations and boundary conditions
Cohen, 2001; Shih and Liu, 2004). The schematic diagram of the CPU heat sink process
to be considered is shown in Figure 1.
This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, a
real-coded genetic algorithm is applied to the optimal
fin shape design. Different from conventional genetic
algorithms, the real-coded genetic algorithm is easier
to use since it does not need the coding and decoding
process and is more efficient to allocate the optimal
solution. The objective function to be minimized is
the entropy generation rate, which has been shown to
be effective in the compromise between the heat
resistance and transfer rate. The optimal design of Fig. 1. CPU heat sink model.
plate-fins with horizontal air cooling system is
The geometric symmetry of the configuration allows The simulations are done using the software -
one to use the system shown in Figure 2 for the COMSOL Multiphysics 3.2 (COMSOL Inc.). The
subsequent numerical study, in order to take the simple and robust graphical user interfaces makes it
advantages of computational efficiency and to easy to set up a partial differential equation (PDE)
maintain the solution accuracy. model, run a simulation and visualize the results
through finite element methods. Figure 4 depicts the
temperature contour in the plate-fins at time t=100,
while the steady-state temperature distribution is
plotted in Figure 5. Besides, Figure 6 shows the time
evolution of the temperature at the control point for
various CPU heat sources. Notice that the sensor
(control point) is located at the bottom of the middle
Fig. 2. Cross section of the CPU heat sink model. fin, which is near to the CPU. As can be seen from
this figure that the temperature can be over 90
For such a CPU heat sink process, heat "travels" from when the fan is switched off, which can thus cause
areas of high temperature to areas of lower the fatal damage of the CPU for long time operation.
temperature is governed by the heat equation:
T Table 1 Physical properties of materials
Cp (kT ) = Q (1)
t Material properties Aluminium Silicon
where is the density, C p the heat capacity, k the Heat capacity, C p ( J / kg K ) 905 705.5
coefficient of heat conduction, which is material Density, ( kg / m 3 ) 2707 2330
dependent, and Q the volume heat source. In (1) the Conductivity, k ( W / m K ) 200 63
first term represents the energy accumulation, the
middle term the difference in the heat flux over the Table 2 Operation conditions of the CPU heat sink
volume, and the last term the volume sink (or source). process
The boundary conditions are of Neumann type with
Parameter Value Description
the outward heat flux, n(kT), being given as
400 Heat transfer coefficient value
n (kT ) = heff (Tinf T ) (2) ( heff , max ) when fan is operated in full
Here n is the normal vector of the heat flux. In (2), speed (W / m 2 K )
heff
the term heff (Tinf T ) is known as Newton's law of 10 Heat transfer coefficient value
cooling, which specifies the heat flux from the ( heff ,min ) when fan is switched off
surroundings due to forced and/or natural (W / m 2 K )
convections, Tinf the external or surrounding Tinf 25 Surroundings temperature )
temperature. It is noted that the radiative heat transfer Volume 5 10 6 CPU volume (m 3 )
is neglected here since the temperatures are assumed Power 30 CPU heat source (W )
to be moderate. Also noted is that the heat sink cools
down the processor by directing the dissipated heat
from processor to the surroundings through heat
conduction. The fan removes the heat from the heat
sink by blowing air across its surface. This
convection heat transfer through is proportional to the
difference in temperatures between the heat sink and n (kT ) = heff (Tinf T )
the surroundings up to a factor known as the heat
transfer coefficient heff . The value of heff depends
on the degree of convection across the surface. That
is the higher the convection, the higher the value.
Figure 3 simply depicts a 2D view of the model
equations and boundary conditions. The outlined area
shows a 2D symmetry approximation. Cp
T
( k T ) = Q
t

2.2 Dynamic simulation and analysis

Heat dispersion with nature heat convection. This
subsection analyses the heat transfer phenomena of n ( kT ) = 0

the CPU heat sink process without a fan. In this case Figure 3 Governing equation and boundary
there is no forced convection and only the conduction conditions
and nature convection are considered. The simulation
studies for this case are under the situations of using Heat dispersion with forced heat convection. The
aluminium fins and silicon CPU. The physical simulation results shown in the pre-subsection
properties of the materials and the operation indicate that the CPU temperature can be too high
conditions are listed in Tables 1 and 2, respectively. when the fan is switched off. The overheat situation
can be simply avoided by turning on the fan to
enforce the air convection. Now, we examine the 55

effectiveness of the heat dispersion for various fan T =35C

inf
T =30C
speeds. Here, it is assumed that with a suitable fan 50 inf
T =20C
inf

speed the temperature at the control point is 40 45

T =15C
inf

initially. Figure 7 shows that the temperature

)
responses for changing the fan speed. From this 40

T(
figure it is seen that the higher speed, the lower 35

temperature at the control point. Besides, Figure 8

indicates that the CPU temperature can be perturbed 30

as the surrounding temperature suddenly changes. 25

1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
time (s)

Fig. 8. Temperature changes in response to

surroundings temperature perturbations.

3. OPTIMAL DESIGN OF CPU HEAT SINK

PROCESSES

3.1 Thermal Analysis of Heat Sink Processes

Before attempting to perform the optimal plate-fin
design, we first conduct the thermal analysis of heat
sink processes. The horizontal air inlet system shown
Fig. 4. Temperature contour plot at t=100. in Figure 9 is considered in this paper.

tb

Fig. 9. A plate-fin heat sink process with horizontal

Fig. 5. Steady state temperature distributions over the inlet flow.
fins.
The model is subject to the following assumptions
130
(Culham and Muzychka, 2001): uniform approach
120
flow velocity, uniform heat transfer coefficient,
110 constant thermal properties, no bypassing flow effect,
100 and the adiabatic fin tips. Due to a fin can generate
90 the entropy associated with the external flow and can
)

80 also generate entropy internally because of the non-

T(

70
isothermal condition, the entropy generation rate can
60
be given by (Bejan, 1982; 1996)
50
30W
Q 2 Rsin k FdV f
S gen = + (3)
40 35W
40W
30
0 1000 2000 3000
time (s)
4000 5000 6000 Tinf2 Tinf
Fig. 6. Temperature evolutions at the control point where Q represents the heat transfer of the fin base,
for different power sources. Rsin k the overall heat sink thermal resistance,
55
T (= Q Rsin k ) the temperature difference between
5% the heat source (CPU) and V f the air flow rate. Fluid
50 50%
100% friction itself is in the form of the drag force, Fd ,
45
along the direction of air flow. This entropy
generation rate is contributed by both the heat sink
)

40
T(

resistance and viscous dissipation. The overall

35
thermal resistance of the finned surface is given by
30
(Kay and London, 1984)
1 t
Rsin k = + b (4)
(n R fin ) + heff (n 1)bL kLw
25
800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 2200 2400 2600 2800 3000
time (s)

Fig. 7. Temperature responses for changing various where n is the number of the fins, and R fin , the
fan speed (initial fan speed is at 12% open).
thermal resistance of each fin, is represented by
 1 3.2 Optimal design: an illustrative example
R fin = (5)
~H ) Consider a plate-fin configuration as shown in
heff PkAc tanh( m
Figure 9, which is equipped with horizontal inlet
of which the parameter m ~ is given by cooling flow. Both the width and base length of the
fin are 5cm. The thermal conductivity of the
m~ = heff P (6) aluminium fin is 200W mK . The total CPU heat
kAc
dissipation of 30W is uniformly applied over the
The perimeter P is the surface area per unit length of
base plate of the fin. The ambient air temperature
fins, and Ac represents the cross-sectional area for
Tinf is 25 . The air density , kinematics viscosity
heat conduction of each fin. The total drag force
, and the air conductivity k f are 1.177kg / m3 ,
Fd of the heat sink can be obtained by the force
balance on the heat sink (Kay and London, 1984) 1.6 10 5 m 2 / s , and 0.0267 W / mK , respectively.
Fd The objective function to be minimized is the
= f appn(2HL + bL) + Ksc (Hw) + Kse (Hw) (7)
entropy generation rate S = Q Rsin k + FdV f , which
2
(1/ 2)Vch2 gen 2
Tinf Tinf
where f app is the apparent friction factor for a hydro-
provides the trade-off between the heat resistance
dynamically developing flow. The channel velocity and transfer rate. The design parameters are the
Vch of horizontal inlet flow is given by number of of fins, n , the height of the fin, H , the
t (8) thickness of the fin, b , and the air flow rate V f . To
Vch = V f (1 + w )
b solve this optimal design problem, a real-coded
and the factor f app for rectangular channel is given genetic algorithm (Tsutsui and Goldberg, 2001) is
by (Muzychka and Yovanovich, 1998): utilized since it does not need the coding and
2 decoding process and is more efficient to allocate the
3.44
f app Re Dh = + ( f Re Dh ) (9) optimal solution as compared with conventional
2

L genetic algorithms. In using the algorithm, we set the

chromosome as = [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ] = [ n, H , b, V f ]. The
where
L parameter space is given by 2 n 40,
L = (10)
Dh Re Dh 0.025m H 0.14m, 0.5m / s V f 2m / s, and
and Dh is the hydraulic diameter of the channel. 2 104 m b 2.5 103 m. Besides, the parameters
Notice that the Reynolds number group f Re Dh in used in the real-coded genetic algorithm are set as
Eq. (9), representing the friction factor of fully N = 200 (number of the chromosomes), p r = 0.2
developed flow, is given by (Muzychka and (parameter for the function of reproduction),
Yovanovich, 1998): p c = 0.2 (parameter for the function of crossover),
2 3
b b b p m = 0.4 (parameter for the function of mutation),
f Re Dh = 24 32.527 + 46.721 40.829
H H H
4 5
s = 0.5 (positive real number), G = 80 (maximum
b b number of generations), and = [0.25, 0.25] (a
+ 22.954 6.089
H H
perturbation vector for mutation).
(11)
Besides, the sudden contraction and expansion Table 3 Comparison of optimal shapes of the plate-
coefficients K sc and K se in Eq. (7) can be, fin using different design methods
respectively, calculated using the following relations
(White, 1987) methods n H b Vf S gen T Rsin k
(m) (m) )
K sc = 0.42(1 2 ) (12) (m/s) (W/K)

K se = (1 2 ) (13) proposed 18.4 0.121 0.00163 1.23 0.0028805 7.1683 0.2389

where proposed 18.0 0.123 0.00168 1.214 0.0028809 7.1805 0.2394

n tw (14)
= 1 Culham
w and
19.07 0.122 0.00160 1.21 0.00306207 7.1885 0.2373
Moreover, the convective heat transfer coefficient Muzychka
can be computed from the following relation (2001)
(Teertstra et al., 2002) Shih and
Liu 20.0 0.134 0.00161 1.05 0.00296702 7.2171 0.2433
1
(2004)
3 3
3
Re b Pr 1 3.65 (15)
N ub = + 0.664 Re b Pr 3
1+ With these parameter settings, we obtained the
2 Re b design results as listed in Table 3, in which the
results by the methods of Culham and Muzychka
heff b b Vch (2001) and Shin and Liu (2004) are also shown for
b
where N ub = , Re b = Re b , Re b = , comparison. From the table, it is clearly shown that
kf L the real-coded genetic algorithm is able to get a
and Pr and represent, respectively, the Prandtl better design solution with less entropy generation
number and the kinematics viscosity of the flow. rate and thus better heat dispersion. Notice that in the
second row of the table, the entropy generation rate
in system with 18 fins is slightly higher than that of
first row, in which the number of fins is not integer.
4. DIRECT ADAPTIVE SNC CONTROL OF CPU
HEAT SINK PROCESSES
It is noted here that the design is based on the
assumption of constant operation conditions. When
the load of the CPU and/or the ambient temperature
change, the designed fin-plate is no longer optimal as
the CPU operation temperature is not the same as that
used for the design. To maintain the performance of
the heat sink in facing with the environmental
disturbance, it is required to adjust the fan speed. To
meet this requirement, a direct adaptive control
strategy using a bound SNC is proposed in this
section for the CPU heat sink processes.
4.1 Control configuration
In this subsection, a bounded SNC is implemented in
the CPU heat sink process to keep the operation
temperature of the CPU at a constant value. Since the
temperature is a function of time and position, the
heat transfer process is described by partial
differential equations. As revealed by the simulation
results in Section 2 and for simplicity, we consider
the temperature control for a single point as shown in
Figure 10, in which the shape of the plate-fin is
optimally designed. Notice that the control point is
selected to locate as close to the CPU as possible,
which has the highest temperature in the plate-fins.
Fig. 10. The optimal plate-fin for the horizontal inlet
flow and the location of temperature sensor.
~
e e u ( heff )
y
Td
e t d s us
Td
Fig. 11. A model-based SNC control system.
A model-based SNC control configuration shown in
Figure 11 is suggested, where the process model of
Gm ( s ) = G ( s )e td s is used. The bounded SNC and
the associated parameter tuning algorithm are
introduced briefly in the following subsection.
4.2 The SNC and parameter tuning algorithm
The bounded SNC is of the form (Chen and Peng,
1999):
1
u (t ) = [ ( 1 + u~ (t ) ) u max + ( 1 u~ (t ) ) u min ] (16)
2
where
u (t ) =
~
~
1 exp b [ ( e (t ) ) ]
[ ( e (t ) ) ]
~ (17)
1 + exp b
In Eq. (17), e (t ) Td (t ) T (t ) is the error between
the setpoint and the actual temperature at the control
~
point. b is the controller slope parameter and the
bias parameter to be tuned adaptively. It can be seen
from Eq. (17) that the function value of u~ (t ) lies
within [-1, 1], which ensures that the controller
output values will be confined in the range of
u min u (t ) u max . For fan speed control, one can set
u max = heff ,max (fully open) and u min = heff ,min (fully
closed). To ensure control system performance,
Chen and Peng (1999) suggested the following
algorithm for tuning the bias parameter.
~ T (18)
(t ) = b e (t ) ( 1 u~ (t ) ) ( 1 + u~ (t ) ) sign
u
In this algorithm, denotes the learning rate
representing the tradeoff between the response speed
and the level of oscillation. The system response
T
direction sign can be set to +1 or -1, according
u
the response direction of the process. For this heat
sink process, the response direction is set -1 since
when fan speed is increased the temperature is
lowered. For the rigorous theoretical proof and the
derivation of the parameter tuning algorithm, see
(Chen and Peng, 1999).
4.3 Control simulation and analysis
In the following simulation studies, we assume that
the wind speed in between the fin is uniform and
constant. This condition is as the same as that used in
Section 3. Under such an assumption, the
temperature along the horizontal axis is the same and
the temperature distribution is varied only along the
vertical axis. Using a simple open loop test, we
obtained a first order plus dead-time model,
0.1001 0.15s
e . This model indicates clearly that the
20.4 s + 1
T
system response direction is -1, i.e., sign = 1 .
u
The initial SNC parameter vector and the learning
rate are set as ( b~ , ) = ( 3 , 0 ) and = 0.5
respectively. Also, according to Table 2 we set the
controller output bounds as u max =400 and u min =10.
For comparison, a PI controller with parameters
K c = 15 and Ti = 15.096, which is tuned with
Ciancone Tuning method (Ciancone and Marlin,
1992), is used. Besides, due to the setpoint at the
control point is 35 the conventional on-off control
with the two-action of heff = 10 , T < 34 is
400 , T > 36
implemented to the control of CPU heat sink process.
The control simulation is implemented with the
combination of COMSOL Multiphysics and Matlab
 Simulink. Figure 12 shows the closed-loop system
response by the proposed scheme, therein the results
by the on-off and PI control strategies are also shown.
As can be seen that the commonly used on-off
control results in highly oscillatory system response,
which is undesirable. The PI controller can bring the
process to the setpoint, but there exists a large
overshoot and the settling time is long. Using the
SNC controller, the system response is quite
satisfactory, mainly due to its adaptive ability. To
examine the control capability in handling with
disturbance, we assume that there is a sudden change
in surroundings temperature from 25 to 32
occurring at t = 600 sec. The control performance of
the SNC controller is still very excellent and robust,
where there is no significant perturbation on the
system output. On the contrary, the on-off controller
is reaching to its upper bound while causing a slight
offset. The PI controller, though can bring the
process output back to the setpoint, gives a
considerable larger deviation and takes longer time to
settle down. It is also observed that the SNC works
well even though the process model is not used
(model free case). The tuning progress of the bias
parameter shows the effectiveness of the parameter
tuning algorithm in handling with this PDE system.
38
36
)
34
Model-based SNC
T(
SNC (model free)
32 PI
On-Off
30
0 200 400 600 800 1000
400
300
heff (W/m 2K)
200
100
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
1
0.5
0
-0.5
-1
-1.5
0 200 400 600
time (s)
800 1000
Fig. 12. Control system performance for the case of
horizontal inlet flow.
5. CONCLUSIONS
This paper has presented an optimization scheme and
a direct adaptive control strategy for CPU heat sink
processes. The heat transfer phenomena of the plate-
fin are investigated using the software - COMSOL
Multiphysics. A real-coded genetic algorithm is
developed for the optimal design of the plate-fin with
horizontal inlet air flows. The objective function to
be minimized is the entropy generation rate, which
allows one to take into account of both the effects of
heat sink resistance and viscous dissipation. The
proposed real-coded genetic algorithm can give better
designs than existing methods.
As indicated by simulation experiments that the CPU
heat sink process is sensitive to environmental
disturbances even though the design is optimal with
respect to certain operating conditions. To reject
these disturbances, a direct adaptive SNC control
scheme has been suggested. With a parameter tuning
algorithm, the SNC controller can adjust the fan
speed adaptively such that the CPU is operated
smoothly at a pre-specified condition despite the
influence of extra loads and the change of
surroundings temperature. Extensive comparisons
revealed that the proposed SNC-based control
scheme is superior in the control performance to
conventional PI controller and the commonly used
on-off control for CPU heat sink processes.
Acknowledgement This work was supported by the
National Science Council of Taiwan (ROC) under
grant NSC 94-2214-E-035-002.
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