Electric heating – Heating devices – With power supply and voltage or current regulation or...
Reexamination Certificate
2001-10-24
2003-01-28
Paschall, Mark (Department: 3742)
Electric heating
Heating devices
With power supply and voltage or current regulation or...
C219S494000, C236S00100H
Reexamination Certificate
active
06512209
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a temperature control apparatus, a temperature control method and a device which can be applied to a large scale computer system, parallel computers, etc., for controlling the operating temperatures of devices such as semiconductor devices with temperature characteristics at their target temperatures so as to enable the devices at their desired operation speed.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, devices such as semiconductor devices used for large scale computers, parallel computers, etc., have temperature characteristics in which their operation speed changes depending on the ambient temperature. Thus, in systems having the devices such as semiconductor devices, there have been known a lot of technologies for controlling the temperatures of the devices. For instance, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei 9-305268 discloses the following technique. That is, when a system operating in a proper environment detects a certain decrease in the temperature Tj of a semiconductor or a certain limited delay time thereof, the system is controlled to operate with the quantity of air supplied by a cooling fan reduced, as a result of which if there is no improvement, a heating-dedicated circuit is operated to restore Tj (chip temperature) or tpd (delay time) to a proper environmental value. In addition, when a certain rise of Tj, or a large value of tpd, or a certain increase in current supply is detected, the quantity of air supplied by the air cooling fan is controlled to increase. If there is no improvement even with these measures, a dummy operation is carried out to slow down the operation of the system. If not improved, at least one of the operation frequency and the supply voltage of the system is decreased, and thereafter the system is transferred to the normal operation at the time when Tj or tpd is restored to the proper value. According to such a technique, it is possible to bring out maximum performance under a proper environment from an information processing system, thereby permitting the system to operate with an optimal amount of power consumption.
Moreover, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-36681 discloses another technique in which the value of a maximum amount of heat is prepared for each logic card by means of an LSI temperature reporting section based on the heat amount data of each LSI detected by a heat observation means which observes the temperature of each LSI to be cooled, and a maximum amount of heat for each logic card is totaled by a required cooling amount determination circuit whereby a maximum amount of heat (maximum temperature) within the housing of a information processing device is prepared and at the same time a necessary amount of cooling A within the housing is determined. As a consequence, the cooling control circuit receives the result of this determination and gives an on/off instruction to a cooling section based on the determination result, thus properly cooling the interior of the information processing device housing in accordance with the amount of heat generated therein. This technique makes it possible to decrease the amount of noise generated by and the amount of power consumed by the large cooling fans to be used for the large-scale information processing device.
Incidentally, devices such as semiconductor devices have respective temperature characteristics and involve variations in their operation speeds. Accordingly, even if the operating temperatures of the semiconductor devices are controlled without taking account of variations in the temperature characteristics and operation speeds thereof, the devices, when incorporated in a system and driven to run, might be subjected to racing and hence errors in operation particularly for the ones included in lots having large operating speeds. In addition, the operation speed of the entire system is limited by the elements or devices of a lot with the slowest switching speed. On the other hand, within the confines of the above-mentioned prior art, there has been proposed a temperature control apparatus intended to achieve, as one of its objects, low power consumption in controlling temperature such as during cooling. However, it is silent about temperature control based on such variations in the temperature characteristics and operation speeds, and hence in such prior art, it is still impossible to solved the above-mentioned problems resulting from variations in operation speeds.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention has been made in view of the problems as referred to above, and has for its object to provide a temperature control apparatus, a temperature control method and a device in which in equipment such as information processing equipment constituted by devices such as semiconductor devices having temperature characteristics, the temperature of each device is controlled to a target operating temperature determined from a target operation speed thereof so as to alleviate the problem of variations in the operation speeds of the respective devices, thereby to enhance the operation speed of the entire system and reduce failures such as racing, etc., as well as the problem of manufacturing yield for improved reliability in operation, thus contributing to power savings in temperature control.
Bearing the above object in mind, according to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a temperature control apparatus comprising: a target operating temperature storage section for storing a target operating temperature of a device which is determined based on a predetermined target operation speed of the device; a temperature detection section for detecting the temperature of the device; a cooling or heating section for cooling or heating the device; and a control section for controlling the cooling or heating section based on a detected temperature of the device detected by the temperature detection section and the target operating temperature stored in the target operating temperature storage section.
With this arrangement, it is possible to control the temperature of the device such as a semiconductor device so as to make its operation speed to a predetermined value in accordance with its temperature characteristic. Accordingly, the operation speeds of a plurality of devices in the apparatus such as an information processing apparatus constituted by the plurality of devices can be made equal to one another. As a result, the manufacturing yield of such apparatuses can be improved and at the same time reliability in operation of the apparatus can be enhanced. In an embodiment of the present invention, control is effected in such a manner that the detected temperature becomes the target operating temperature.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a temperature control apparatus comprising: a target operating temperature storage section for storing a target operating temperature of a predetermined device which is determined based on a predetermined target operation speed of at least the predetermined device among a plurality of devices; a temperature detection section for detecting the temperature of at least the predetermined device among the plurality of devices; a cooling or heating section for cooling or heating the plurality of devices; and a control section for controlling the cooling or heating section based on a detected temperature of the predetermined device detected by the temperature detection section and the target operating temperature of the predetermined device stored in the target operating temperature storage section.
In this case, it is possible to construct the plurality of devices such that the target operating temperatures thereof are made similar to one another.
In addition, it is preferable that the temperature detection section is arranged to detect the temperature of a device located in the vicinity of the center among the plurality of devices. Thus, it is possible to prevent the central device, which
Fujitsu Limited
Paschall Mark
Staas & Halsey , LLP
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