One of the “fairy tales” that I see as a trend in thermal engineers performing electronics cooling is that they become dependent on the capabilities and methodology of the particular software they use. If the help guide or our mentor showed us how to solve a particular problem with our software tool and it worked, we may not have a reason to change even if the method is not the … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2012
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...]
Modeling and Experimentation: Characterization of Hot Spot Dissipation in 3D Stacks
Three dimensional (3D) integration is considered a very promising technology for integrated circuit design [1]. It offers numerous opportunities to designers looking for more cost-effective system chip solutions. It allows further decrease in the form factor of today's systems and eases the interconnect performance limitation since the components are integrated on top of each … [Read more...]
New Thermo-Fluid Simulation Software for Power and Energy Markets
Mentor Graphics Corporation announced the Flowmaster(R) Power and Energy version for system level thermo-fluid simulation. This new product provides a two-phase solution modeling the phase change from liquid to vapor for steam generation or from vapor to liquid when steam is consumed. The software introduces a complete steam/water Rankine Cycle simulation capability for the … [Read more...]
Research Program Attempts Embedded Cooling
DARPA’s Intrachip/Interchip Enhanced Cooling (ICECool) program seeks to explore embedded thermal management by bringing microfluidic cooling inside the substrate, chip or package by including thermal management in the earliest stages of electronics design. This embedded cooling comes in the form of microchannels designed and built directly into chips, substrates and packages. … [Read more...]