Power Trace: An Efficient Method for Extracting the Power Dissipation Profile in an IC Chip From Its Temperature Map

In this paper, we present a new technique to calculate the power dissipation profile from the IC temperature map using a process analogous to image processing and restoration. In this technique, finite-element analysis (FEA) is used to find the heat-point spread function (heat PSF) of the IC chip. Then, the temperature map is used as input for an efficient image restoration algorithm which locates the sources of strong power dissipation non-uniformities. Therefore, it optimally solves the inverse heat transfer problem, and estimates the IC power map without extensive lab experiments. Our computationally efficient and robust method, unlike some previous techniques, applies to many experimental scenarios. Simulation results on a typical commercial integrated circuit chip confirm the effectiveness of our proposed method.