Hello, I am just curious: does the ATmega2560 processor have a on board cooling circuit? Like, how does the Arduino Mega 2560's processor stay cool?
Thanks,
UptownKitten
Hello, I am just curious: does the ATmega2560 processor have a on board cooling circuit? Like, how does the Arduino Mega 2560's processor stay cool?
Thanks,
UptownKitten
This is for a science project, in biology, I am comparing parts of an animal cell to an Arduino Mega 2560. Also, I couldn't find anything about a cooling circuit in the datasheets, so I decided to ask here.
It doesn't get that hot to start with.
Okay, but why?
Heat comes from transistors switching. Mega doesn't have that many (compared to the microprocessor in a PC) and it doesn't switch that fast, only 16 MHz, while PC processors switch at speeds like 3.2 GHz, 200 times faster.
If you look at Section 32 of the datasheet, there are charts showing current draw under various conditions and power supply voltage.
For example, the 2nd chart shows current draw for 16 MHz clock under an "Active" condition.
Current draw, Icc, at 16 MHz, is 20mA.
Power = current x voltage, so 0.02A x 5V = 0.1W, 100mW, so not very hot, not very warm even.
Oh, alright. Thanks!
As a very rough estimate, the power dissipation of a chip (how much heat it generates), is going to be proportional to the number of transistors that make up the chip.
An ATmega128 is estimated to have about 1 million transistors (and an ATmega2560 perhaps twice that, in that it has twice as much memory; some estimates are much lower), and runs at about 0.1W. A modern Intel Core i7 runs about 1.5 billion transistors, so 1000x the power consumption (~100W) is about right.