Say, remember a couple of weeks back when we mentioned the rumors that Apple was angling to solve the issue of the PowerPC 970's matter-vaporizing heat output by grafting some kind of wacky sump-pump Reanimator-style green-stuff-bubbling-through-tubes liquid cooling system into the eventual PowerBook G5? Well, the rumors just got a little less rumory, and the good news is that if Apple does indeed go the liquid cooling route, it doesn't necessarily have to turn the PowerBook's internals into something reminiscent of a crystal meth lab. (No comments about the G5 and excessive "speed," please.)

It seems that the EE Times has an article on a small company called Cooligy, which is developing active liquid-based chip-cooling systems based on technology originally slapped together at Stanford University. Basically, instead of piping water to and from the processor using what is essentially glorified fish tank apparatus as in those "traditional" liquid cooling kits that are so popular with the overclockers over there in Terminal Geekville, the Cooligy system uses something called Active Micro-Channel Cooling, which apparently allows the whole liquid transfer system to exist pretty much as part of the chip itself.

AMC involves "etching hundreds of channels on a piece of silicon" using "techniques used to make semiconductors and pharmaceuticals" (Aha! The meth lab is involved somehow!) so that said chunk of silicon can replace that whole plastic-tubes assembly that would prove to be just two hairs shy of wildly impractical in a portable computer. Said micro-etched silicon chunk sits on top of the processor and acts sort of like one very thin, very long, and very tightly-wound tube carrying water toward and then away from the surface of the processor. You know, kind of like a teensy small intestine, only carrying water instead of, um, partly-digested food.

Yuck.

Unfortunate comparisons to bowels notwithstanding, Cooligy says that its system can dissipate up to 1,000 watts per square centimeter, which ought to be plenty of cooling action even for today's G5s, let alone lower-wattage models that should emerge early next year once IBM has its 90-nanometer mojo workin'. And here's the kicker: EE Times reports that "Cooligy said that it has already developed a prototype system with the help of companies like Intel, Apple Computer, and Advanced Micro Devices." So Apple is apparently getting in on the ground floor, because it's all too aware that nine fans and four independent thermal zones just aren't going to cut it in a G5 portable-- unless there's a massive untapped market for a microwave-sized laptop with a ten-minute battery life of which we were previously unaware.