Thermap: a thermal model for microprocessors

Author

Fitch, John S. ; Monier, Louis ; Tamet, Hervé

Author_Institution

Digital Equipment Corp., Palo Alto, CA, USA

Volume

18

Issue

3

fYear

1995

fDate

9/1/1995 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

553

Lastpage

558

Abstract

Thermap is a numerical model that predicts the steady-state temperature of a multilayered stack of materials, which might include voids. Heat flux and temperature can be prescribed at any node. Thermap gathers the heat flux boundary descriptions from a VLSI CAD tool in order to simulate a microprocessor. This can be done with very fine spatial resolution. Thermal conductivities can be temperature dependent. Residual iteration, grid refinement, and efficient use of data structures allow Thermap to converge quickly. A graphical server called ezd is used to view the resulting images of power or temperature. Thermap´s temperature predictions are compared with an infrared measurement of a real microprocessor

Keywords

VLSI; circuit CAD; data structures; engineering graphics; integrated circuit modelling; integrated circuit packaging; iterative methods; microprocessor chips; temperature distribution; thermal analysis; thermal conductivity; Thermap; VLSI CAD tool; data structures; ezd graphical server; grid refinement; heat flux boundary descriptions; microprocessors; multilayered materials stack; numerical model; residual iteration; steady-state temperature; temperature predictions; thermal conductivity; thermal model; voids; Conducting materials; Data structures; Image converters; Microprocessors; Numerical models; Spatial resolution; Steady-state; Temperature dependence; Thermal conductivity; Very large scale integration;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology, Part A, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1070-9886

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/95.465152

Filename

465152