Clemson University researchers said they have developed a new process and equipment that will lead to a significant reduction in heat generated by silicon chips or microprocessors, while increasing the processing rate.

Professor Rajendra Singh, director for the university's Center for Silicon Nanoelectronics, said microprocessors produce heat depending on the speed at which they operate. Presently, dual-core or quad-core microprocessors are packaged as a single product in laptops so heat is reduced without compromising overall speed.

The problem, said Singh, is that writing software for multi-core processors, along with making them profitable, remains a challenge.

"In the future it will be possible to use a smaller number of microprocessors in a single chip since we've increased the speed of the individual microprocessors," said Singh. "At the same time, we've reduced power loss six-fold to a level never seen before."

The research that included Aarthi Venkateshan, Kelvin Poole, James Harriss, Herman Senter and Robert Teague of Clemson and J. Narayan of North Carolina State University appeared in the Oct. 11 issue of the journal Electronics Letters.