Thomas Brunschwiler

The future of powerful computing may be all wet. That's the outlook as IBM and the Fraunhofer Institute on Thursday demonstrated a 3-D stack of computer chips cooled by water. The concept means the industry may continue to innovate well into the future.

Chip designers have been in a furious race against Moore's Law -- the observation by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every two years -- with some experts suspecting the industry will soon be unable to maintain that rate of growth.

But research announced Thursday suggests chip designers still have a few tricks up their sleeves that may substantially advance Moore's Law. IBM and the Berlin-based Fraunhofer Institute demonstrated a prototype design of a 3-D, water-cooled chipstack.