News GE unveils piezoelectric fan replacement technology

[Gareth Halfacree]

Half the size, half the power, all the performance.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardwar...12/13/ge-dcj/1

[liratheal]

When can I get some in servers?

I come away from some customers partially deaf.

[Flibblebot]

Originally Posted by Article

cool components down far more efficiently than just convention alone

I wasn't aware that cooling was so hung up on the accepted wisdom for its cooling

It's an intriguing idea, it'd be interesting to see how they perform against standard (that's conventional convection ) fans.

Should we be worried, though, that everyone in the video was wearing safety goggles - even the besuited VP?

[Bazz]

General Electric - yes, the Minigun company

So they only make the Minigun then?

Quite strange that we use a lot of GE stuff at work which aren't miniguns, suppose we aren't blinkered like some.

Originally Posted by Flibblebot

Should we be worried, though, that everyone in the video was wearing safety goggles - even the besuited VP?

Also I work in a research lab, and most of the time we have to wear safety gear, so I do not understand you're question, its just basic health & safety.

[Roskoken]

Originally Posted by Bazz

So they only make the Minigun then?

Quite strange that we use a lot of GE stuff at work which aren't miniguns, suppose we aren't blinkered like some.

Easily in the top 5 largest corporations on the planet.

[PingCrosby]

I'd rather have the Minigun meself like

[Landy_Ed]

"down far more efficiently than just convention alone"

Convention? do you mean convection?

[Gradius]

The prob with GE is they have almost everything you can image, and you can't be good at everything PERIOD!

[yougotkicked]

Honestly, this is one of the coolest bits of tech I've seen in a while. If their performance claims hold up, and the price is reasonable, I could see these being quite a big deal.

[Gareth Halfacree]

Originally Posted by Flibblebot

I wasn't aware that cooling was so hung up on the accepted wisdom for its cooling ?

Oopsie - fixed, ta!

Originally Posted by Bazz

So they only make the Minigun then? Quite strange that we use a lot of GE stuff at work which aren't miniguns, suppose we aren't blinkered like some.

Blinkered, by referring to GE's most famous creation? You'll have to let me know what the view is like from up there on that high horse. Does GE make/invest in/invent other things than firearms? Yes. When you say "General Electric," does a not-insignificant proportion of the male populace, raised on a diet of films like Terminator 2 and Predator - which, incidentally, show the Minigun as man-portable, when it is not - hear the suffix "Minigun" in their internal monologue? Yes. Is that proportion even higher on a site where a large section of the readership play games with Minigun and Minigun-like weapons (from the 'chaingun' found in Wolfenstein 3D and Doom upwards?) Yes.

It was a lighthearted throwaway comment, nothing more. Don't fret: I'm sure GE's stock price will recover from my devastating hatchet job.

(Incidentally, I have a GE consumer unit powering my house. Suppose I'm not blinkered and presumptive like some.)

[Zoon]

When I think GE, I think jet engines for planes. So you're both wrong!

[Flibblebot]

Actually, when I think GE I think Six Sigma and loads of middle managers creating projects just so that they can get their black belts...

[fluxtatic]

Originally Posted by Gareth Halfacree

Blinkered, by referring to GE's most famous creation?

Going to have to disagree with you there. While every person whose played a video game with guns in the past twenty years likely is aware of the minigun, I can pretty well guarantee very, very few are aware it was invented by GE.

When I think GE, I think light bulb commercials with that 'we bring good things to life' jingle...but maybe that was a US thing.

At any rate, nice to see them actually investing in some R & D - seems a lot of corporations don't like spending money on anything if it won't make them a profit within the next two quarters.

I won't argue with the performance, since it seems to work (and damn - a design that simple nobody thought up until 2012? Humanity, I am disappoint.) But I'm not seeing how it will work to make a 200mm big boy lit up with super-bright, garish LEDs :P

[Bogomip]

Yeah, I didnt know GE made the minigun - however it doesn't really warrant the kind of reception that small sentence is getting... get over it, guys

Seems like an interesting piece of tech - I would LOVE a cheap solution to making my pc entirely silent, and since this is simply a few pieces of metal that vibrated I would imagine that it would get fairly cheap fairly quick

edit: also, as wireless power gets a bit cheaper I wonder if these could be powered wirelessly... then you could just stick them anywhere in your case, or all over your case, without the need for wires (would dramatically increase the price though I would imagine!)

[tuk]

By 1890, Thomas Edison had brought together several of his business interests under one corporation to form Edison General Electric.

GE was one of the eight major computer companies during the 1960s — with IBM, the largest, called "Snow White" followed by the "Seven Dwarfs": Burroughs, NCR, Control Data Corporation, Honeywell, RCA, UNIVAC and GE.

GE had an extensive line of general purpose and special purpose computers. Among them were the GE 200, GE 400, and GE 600 series general purpose computers, the GE 4010, GE 4020, and GE 4060 real time process control computers, the Datanet 30 and Datanet 355 message switching computers (Datanet 30 and 355 were also used as front end processors for GE mainframe computers). A Datanet 500 computer was designed, but never sold.

In 1962, GE started developing its GECOS (later renamed GCOS) operating system, originally for batch processing, but later extended to timesharing and transaction processing. Versions of GCOS are still in use today.

In 1964–1969, GE and Bell Laboratories (which soon dropped out) joined with MIT to develop the pioneering and influential Multics operating system on the GE 645 mainframe computer. The project took longer than expected and was not a major commercial success, but it demonstrated important concepts such as single level store, dynamic linking, hierarchical file system, and ring-oriented security. Active development of Multics continued until 1985.

It has been said that GE got into computer manufacturing because in the 1950s they were the largest user of computers outside of the United States federal government, aside from being the first business in the world to own a computer and its electronics manufacturing plant "Appliance Park" was the first non-governmental site to host one.. However, in 1970, GE sold its computer division to Honeywell, exiting the computer manufacturing industry, though it retained its timesharing operations for some years afterwards. GE was a major provider of computer timesharing services, through General Electric Information Services (GEIS, now GXS), offering online computing services that included GEnie.

In 2002, GE acquired the windpower assets of Enron during its bankruptcy proceedings. Enron Wind was the only surviving U.S. manufacturer of large wind turbines at the time, and GE increased engineering and supplies for the Wind Division and doubled the annual sales to $1.2 billion in 2003. It acquired ScanWind in 2009.

Some consumers boycotted GE light bulbs, refrigerators and other products in the 1980s and 1990s to protest GE’s role in nuclear weapons production