Overclocking an Arduino with liquid Nitrogen

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If you need to squeeze a bit more speed out of your Arduino project Overclocking with liquid Nitrogen might not be the best way but it sure looks like fun!

Via: Dangerous Prototypes.

Why CMOS microchips could work faster when cooled? CMOS speed is usually limited by how fast transistors could recharge parasitic capacitances (gate capacitance and interconnect capacitance) via parasitic resistance/inductance of the wires. When cooled wire resistance lowers – and microchip could work at higher frequency.

So liquid nitrogen helps with overclocking not because there is that much heat to dissipate (actually water is much better at removing heat due to much higher heat capacity) but rather because electric parameters of CMOS microchip improves at very low temperatures.”