Bruce Guenin, Assoc. Technical Editor Introduction As integrated circuit (IC) devices get more complex, the interconnections between them provided by printed circuit boards (PCBs) get more complicated as well. Thermal simulation software tools are getting more capable of importing PCB layouts and automating the process of creating a model of the PCB whose local thermal … [Read more...]
Use of JEDEC Thermal Metrics in Calculating Chip Temperatures (without Attached Heat Sinks)
Bruce Guenin Assoc. Technical Editor, Electronics Cooling INTRODUCTION JEDEC single-chip package thermal metrics are widely used as a means of characterizing the thermal performance of semiconductor packages. They correlate the peak temperature of a uniformly-heated semiconductor chip (the junction temperature, TJ) with the temperature of a specified region along the heat … [Read more...]
Editorial: My Personal Thermal Management Project
It can be an amusing thing to notice how sometimes things come full-circle in our lives. My involvement with heat transfer began in college and continued through grad school and a post doc, as I conducted experiments involving liquid helium, both as a refrigerant and the object of study. Since liquid helium was such a precious refrigerant, a key strategy for achieving these … [Read more...]
Calculation Corner: Transient Thermal Modeling of a High-Power IC Package, Part 1
Part II can be found here. There is an increasing need for calculating integrated circuit temperatures during conditions of changing chip power. Varying computer workloads and the implementation of power-saving strategies are leading to greater variability in chip power levels than in the past. As reliability requirements get more stringent there are growing concerns about the … [Read more...]
Editorial: The Only Constant is Change … and Thermal Standards
The current millennium has been marked by great change in so many areas — political, economic, cultural, technological, climatic ... and the list goes on. I, as I’m sure many of you, often look for things that persist in a familiar form despite the flux of events that surround us. We often can count on our personal relationships within families, friends, and communities to help … [Read more...]
