Compaq 112726-001 - ProLiant - 6500 Technology Brief page 6

ECG078/0698
T B
ECHNOLOGY RIEF
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Thermal Design
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Compaq has designed an innovative thermal cooling solution for the Pentium II Xeon processor
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that contributes to increased system reliability and future performance scalability to 8-way
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architectures. Heat pipes transfer heat away from the Slot 2 cartridge thermal plate to cooling
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fins mounted atop the cartridge (Figure 1).
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Figure 1: Heat pipes and fins for the Pentium II Xeon processor cartridge.
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This top-mounted position and the direction of the cooling fins are advantageous in two important
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ways. First, this design cools efficiently regardless of the direction of air flow (vertical or
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horizontal). Therefore, the same Slot 2 cartridge and heat sink combination used in the ProLiant
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7000 4-way configuration can also be used in future 8-way configurations by simply reorienting
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the processors. Second, because the heat fins are top mounted, the redundant processor power
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module can be placed in its optimal position, next to the processor, to maintain short signal trace
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lengths across the 100-MHz system bus (Figure 2). The resulting improvements to power supply
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regulation and system bus signal quality increase system reliability. Moreover, the smaller
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spacing between processor sockets makes possible future upgrades to 8-way Pentium II Xeon
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6
(cont.)
Pentium II Xeon
P r o c e s s o r C a r t r i d g e
Fins
Heat Pipes