HyperColor lives! Intel plans on fighting overheating laptops with little bit of light and color-changing material. The chip giant has patented a new technology that uses sensors to read heat-sensitive color-changing material inside the laptop. If certain parts of the laptop get too hot, the laptop will throttle back the power to cool down.
Some premium motherboards have had temperature throttling capabilities, but Intel claims the new technique is more accurate than a simple thermometer. As everyone should know, laptops do not heat evenly and power-hungry parts like the graphics processor and CPU get very hot. Intel believes the color-changing material would turn from a cold green to a hot red, colors which, when illuminated, can be easily detected by a sensor.
Intel says a fan will turn on when temperatures reach a high level and that the processor can even throttle itself at extreme temperatures. You can read all the gory technical details about Intel's patent here.
Intel hasn't specified exactly what material is being used, but we hope it isn't the shirt fabric from the HyperColor T-Shirts that were a big fad in the mid-80s.
