Thermoelectric Cooling to Survive Commodity DRAMs in Harsh Environment Automotive Electronics

Today, more and more commodity hardware devices are used in safety-critical applications, such as advanced driver assistance systems in automotive. These applications demand very high reliability of electronic components even in adverse environmental conditions, such as high temperatures. Ensuring the reliability of microelectronic components is a major challenge at these high temperatures. The computing systems of these applications rely on DRAMs as working memory, which are built upon bit cells that store charges in capacitors. These commodity DRAMs are optimized for cost per bit and not for high reliability. Thus, very high temperatures impose an enormous challenge for commodity DRAMs as the data retention time and reliability decrease largely, affecting the data correctness. Data correctness can be ensured up to certain temperatures by increasing the refresh rate to counterbalance the retention time reduction. However, this severely degrades the access latencies and the usable DRAM bandwidth. To overcome these limitations, we present for the first time a Thermoelectric Cooling (TEC) solution for commodity DRAMs in harsh-environments, such as automotive. Our TEC solution enables the use of commodity off-the-shelf DRAMs in safety-critical applications by reducing the temperature conditions to a range where they can operate reliably. This TEC solution is applied a posteriori to the DRAM chips without using high-cost package solutions. Thus, it maintains the low-cost targets of such devices, improves the reliability, and at the same time, counterbalances the adverse effects of increasing the refresh rate. To quantitatively evaluate the benefits of TEC on commodity DRAMs in harsh-environments, we performed system-level evaluations with several applications backed up by the measured data on commodity DRAMs. Our experimental results, using accurate multi-physics simulations that employ finite element method, demonstrate that the TEC-based cooling ensures that the maxim..

Transurethral resection of ejaculatory ducts (TURED) for the management of ejaculatory duct obstruction: a Saudi cohort

This retrospective study aimed to investigate the clinical characteristics, changes in semen parameters, and outcomes of adult patients with ejaculatory duct obstruction (EDO) who underwent transurethral resection of ejaculatory ducts (TURED). The study included 25 patients diagnosed with EDO who underwent TURED at King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center in Saudi Arabia between January 2015 and December 2021. The results showed that 68% of the patients had complete ED obstruction, while 32% had partial obstruction. Primary infertility was reported in 68% of the patients, with 4% experiencing secondary infertility. The analysis revealed a significant increase in semen volume greater than 0.6 after TURED, while there was a significant decrease in volumes ranging from 0.1 to 0.3 and from 0.4 to 0.6. Patients with partial ED obstruction demonstrated a significant improvement in semen parameters compared to those with complete ED obstruction. The findings suggest that TURED is a safe and effective treatment option for EDO, leading to significant improvements in semen parameters and potentially resulting in spontaneous pregnancy. However, further research is needed to identify specific patient subgroups that may benefit the most from TURED. While magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with an endorectal coil has been proposed for more detailed evaluation, transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) has been suggested as the standard examination technique

Longevity of Commodity DRAMs in Harsh Environments Through Thermoelectric Cooling

Today, more and more commodity hardware devices are used in safety-critical applications, such as advanced driver assistance systems in automotive. These applications demand very high reliability of electronic components even in adverse environmental conditions, such as high temperatures. Ensuring the reliability of microelectronic components is a major challenge at these high temperatures. The computing systems of these applications rely on DRAMs as working memory, which are built upon bit cells that store charges in capacitors. These commodity DRAMs are optimized for cost per bit and not for high reliability. Thus, very high temperatures impose an enormous challenge for commodity DRAMs as the data retention time and reliability decrease largely, affecting the data correctness. Data correctness can be ensured up to certain temperatures by increasing the refresh rate to counterbalance the retention time reduction. However, this severely degrades the access latencies and the usable DRAM bandwidth. To overcome these limitations, we present for the first time a Thermoelectric Cooling (TEC) solution for commodity DRAMs in harsh-environments, such as automotive. Our TEC solution enables the use of commodity off-the-shelf DRAMs in safety-critical applications by reducing the temperature conditions to a range where they can operate reliably. This TEC solution is applied a posteriori to the DRAM chips without using high-cost package solutions. Thus, it maintains the low-cost targets of such devices, improves the reliability, and at the same time, counterbalances the adverse effects of increasing the refresh rate. To quantitatively evaluate the benefits of TEC on commodity DRAMs in harsh-environments, we performed system-level evaluations with several applications backed up by the measured data on commodity DRAMs. Our experimental results, using accurate multi-physics simulations that employ finite element method, demonstrate that the TEC-based cooling ensures that the maximum temperature of all DRAM chips is always below 85°C despite that the original on-chip temperature (i.e., in the absence of our TEC based cooling) goes beyond 120°C