Yes but..

Surface area is still relevent; greater surface area could boil (or convect) more fluid if there is enough heat to dissipate.
This stuff is so efficient that surface area would not come into play unless you're wanting to push something like (wildly guessing here) 1kW through a 25x25mm chip.
Is that the stuff in the heat pipes on heatsinks?
Similar in that it's a phase change system, yea; not sure on the specifics.
Does it require pressure lid or just cooling to recapture?
This is known as open bath so in theory no lid is required (but in practice an almost air tight lid is advisable); where water is 1kg per 1L Novec 7100 is about 1.35kg for 1L and the same goes for the gas once it evaporates it is much heavier than air. Once the layer of HFE gas is thick enough to reach the cooling it condenses and drips back down to replenish the bath.
Would be expensive fun to watch that stuff in traditional water cooling system.
Potential catastrophy and all.
More pics please please please

YMMV

His rig has seen some changes since, but I took these when I first got eyes on his test setup. Not really showing anything different to smracer video:
http://videobam.com/MduAt





EDIT:
Other VRM's eventually get much hotter and some clocks reduced to keep a handle on VRM temps; but the board in Novec can just be adjusted for max speed up to 51A(ish):

He needs to get the clocks running faster but neither he or I have any idea where to start; can we get a noobs guide to 525Mhz?
u27