I've been reading Tanenbaum's Structured Computer Organization and he says one of the major bottlenecks for increasing CPU clock speed is heat. So I started thinking: Is it possible to remove the heatsink altogether and use that heat to generate more electricity? I've been searching on this and found these thermoelectric materials and this thermoelectric generator:
I read on that Wikipedia article that "Silicon-germanium alloys are currently the best thermoelectric materials around 1000 °C (...)", and I know CPU normally operate around 30~40°C. So, getting to 1000 °C would require more CPUs.
So I thought: What about putting a lot of CPUs in parallel without their heatsinks to gather more heat? We can also overclock these CPUs a whole lot and see how much heat they can generate.
But I'm stuck. I don't know what to think next. I don't even know if it's a good line of thought.
My question is: why not develop some sort of heatsink that generates electricity from the CPU's heat? I know somebody must already have thought about that and thought about a reason why not to do it, but I can't figure it out.
So, why is it not possible?
EDIT for clarification: I do not want CPUs to work at 1000 °C. I'll list my reasoning steps (not necessarily correct), which were roughly:
- CPU clock speed is limited by working temperature (T).
- CPUs generate heat. Heat makes T rise.
- Heatsinks take care of that heat in order to maintain T=40°C.
- Replace heatsink with thermoelectric generator (built from SiGe or similar material)
- Put a lot of CPUs side by side to increase heat generation.
- Heat comes out the CPUs to TEG, so CPUs stays at T=40°C.
- Is this possible?
- How to build such a TEG? Which material to use?
- Why such device doesn't exist already?
- Asked this question.
EDIT2: I see that my idea is fundamentally wrong and bad. Thanks for all the answers and comments. Sorry about any misunderstandings.