Real-time thermal design of integrated circuit devices

A novel method for real-time thermal design of integrated circuits is presented. The method uses a multiple regression technique whose input is the thermal profile due to a unit heat source over an infinite multi-layered plate structure. The unit profile in two dimensions is calculated using the Fourier integral solution and matched to an equation having several parameters. The temperature profiles of rectangular device structures having the same layered composition are computed by superposing the profiles generated by the matched equation, shifted in position according to the source location and weighted by the source power. By using the proposed approach, it is possible to reduce the CPU time required by a factor of several hundred thousand compared to analytical approaches and numerical techniques. As a result, it is possible to perform IC (integrated circuit) thermal design at the chip level.<>