Topic: Avalon Asic Design Discussion - page 4. (Read 8194 times)
Energy density matters. Xbox360 GPU consumed about 100W from a square area the size of your smallest fingernail. Each of the 80 SHA256 processors consumes about 2W and combined they are spread out over the surface area of a small book. Comparing the cooling requirements isn't exactly apples to apples.
This bothers me, Avalon chose to put the heatsinks on the back of the board instead of directly on the chips themselves also there should channel guides for the airflow to make sure the air flows through the fins efficiently, this was one of the problems the xbox360 had with its GPU they used a channel guide but it wasn't covering the top of the GPU heatsink because they had the DVD-ROM drive siting on top which didn't push enough air through the fins.I have fixed many xbox360's with simple cardboard cuts to make the heatsinks work like they should with proper airflow and not one has ever overheated again or even run the fan on high when doing long periods of gaming. just my 2 cents but i believe they will have heating issue in the future.
Jump to: