This question is completely out of curiosity:
What would be the most effective way to stress the amtel chip on the arduino. By stress I mean to push it to the limit and cause it to warm up. Sort of like Prime95 for overclockers. Not that I intend to overclock the arduino (if its even possible). Just simply wondering 
Not easy as a lot of the power dissipation specifications are dependent on having electrical loads on output pins. So I would think that a lot of resistors would have to be wired to the digital pins to simulate normal or worst case electrical loads.
Lefty
Hmm, I see what you mean. I was just hoping to get heat out of pure prosscesing power not electrical loads.
By the way, is it possible to overclock the arduino?
Maybe by giving it a faster crystal?
By the way, is it possible to overclock the arduino?
Maybe by giving it a faster crystal?
Yes, that is possible. I think most of the AVR chips used on the Arduino have a max rated speed of 20mhz if powered from 5vdc, less speed if powered by less then 5vdc. The spec sheets for specific AVR chip will have their ratings. Over speeding by increasing the external crystal frequency is possible to soom degree but you are on your own and some of the Arduino AVR software will probably not work at all if not run at exactly 16mhz (or 8mhz for some chips). And again even assuming you could run at some speed in excess of 16mhz it would also be effected by what the external I/O current load is so unless you have external loads representing what your application is doing then it would not mean anything realistic.
Lefty