Mentor Blogs

"Plagiarism saves time" as can be seen in the title of this blog, a nod to Tom Hausherr’s excellent blog series, particularly Part 15 that focuses on QFNs. Whereas the internal construction of a package is of little interest when defining CAD library symbols, from a thermal simulation perspective they are absolutely critical. FloTHERM PACK can be seen as a ‘pre-processor’ … Read More

Electronics Cooling, bottleneck, QFN

FloTHERM, and its sister product FloVENT, have been going since 1989. Many in the Mechanical Analysis Division in Mentor have been working on these products for that time, personally I’m up to 15 years. It’s testament to the products and their success that our passion for them continues unabated. V9.2 was released this week, the ~20th release in these product lines. Many vendors will stand … Read More

CTM, Electronics Cooling, bottleneck, FloVENT

What a wonderful expression this is … putting feathers in our caps. I looked up the origins of this phrase and found that in the days gone by people used to put a new feather in the headgear of warriors for every enemy they defeated in battle. And the more feathers in the headdress, the more victories and the better the warrior. Our CFD battlefield is symbolic in nature but it exists nonetheless. And … Read More

Shortcut field, Bottleneck field, CFD, Award, EDN Hot 100, Electronics Cooling, Design Engineer, Design News Golden Mousetrap

The convergence of technology platforms continues apace, especially in the mobile telephony world. The world of overclockers and case modders isn’t standing still either. For the bargain price of $29.99 you can bag yourself a 5.25 inch bay toaster from CrazyPC.com. The wonderful dichotomy of having a system that requires both electronics thermal cooling and benefits from electronics thermal heating … Read More

toast, Electronics Cooling, toaster

One of the highlights of the electronics thermal management calender is the annual SEMI-THERM symposium held in sunny San Jose, California and it’s with the usual sense of excitement that I’m preparing to attend it. The acquisition of Flomerics by Mentor Graphics was two and half years ago and, despite the expectations of many, the activities and success of the ‘Mechanical Analysis … Read More

Semitherm, Electronics Cooling, T3ster

The first day of spring is almost upon us. It signals the beginning of my “smiley” days because I get to drive to and from work when it’s light outside. This year, the first day of spring also coincides with the first day of Semitherm. Semitherm which is being held in Santa Clara, California, is considered the premiere electronics cooling event in the world. Semitherm offers us a great … Read More

Semitherm, Electronics Cooling

Well, the Christian world needs to wait a couple of more weeks for Easter to come. But the lent of the semiconductor thermal management community is close to finish - at least after a long period of my silence here - since I am writing a new post again. And the reason is that we are facing a very busy week: for the semiconductor thermal management community the week between 20 and 26 March will be like … Read More

RthJC, reliability testing, SEMI-THERM, Electronics Cooling, AC LED, T3ster, LED thermal testing, LM80 tests, TIM testing, JEDEC, JESD51-14

For a blog series focused on thermal design there has been precious little design presented so far. Design is the process of making a plan for the construction of an object/product. Whether you subscribe to the rational or action-centric model of the design process, some form of iteration and adaption is used to arrive at a design that is fit for production. Trying an idea, seeing it fail, finding out … Read More

bottleneck, Electronics Cooling, beer, fridge, vent, Fan

All good things come to those who wait. For beer this entails a trade off between anticipation and satisfaction. If, too soon after you put the room temperature beer in the fridge, you get your child to grab a beer for you, your thirst might be quenched but your satisfaction might not be. Wait too long for it to cool down and you might forget you wanted one, or go to sleep, or hit the whisky instead. … Read More

Electronics Cooling, time constant, beer, Transient

As the ancient proverb goes; a beer fridge without beer is like X Factor, utterly pointless. You’d have thought that by clogging up the insides of the fridge with pesky cans of beer you’d cripple it’s thermal performance. As someone once said of Simon Cowell …”O, how wrong you are”. When modelling a can of beer in FloTHERM, in fact when modelling any part or object, … Read More

Electronics Cooling, beer

The futility of investigating the cooling effectiveness of any empty fridge is beginning to dawn on me, the irony of which is matched only by my new-years-resolution-inspired-sobriety. Never mind, let’s see this particular study through…  Whether in a beer ridden fury or in moments of Galilean scientific investigation, you might find yourself kicking the fridge over on to its side or even … Read More

Electronics Cooling, beer

Beer drinkers are notoriously quiet people and as such would not want to be disturbed by the continuous hissing and whirring of a classic compression/expansion refrigeration cycle type beer fridge. They would argue that’s why both kids and kitchens were invented. Kitchens to put the noisy fridge in, kids to go get the next beer. Electric coolers, fridges that utilise thermoelectric coolers (TECs) … Read More

fridge, thermoelectric cooler, TEC, Electronics Cooling, beer

My boss, Roland, relocated from Germany to the UK a couple of years ago and has taken to life in England with alacrity. As a gift for the Mechanical Analysis product development department (Hampton Court) he bought a little fridge which has been busy ever since cooling the beer in it that everyone has been too polite to drink. A few weeks ago it stopped working. Some inquisitive minds and a couple of … Read More

Electronics Cooling, beer

I guess, many people who had to find the metric  known as “theta-JC”  have asked themselves the question great many times: how to measure junction-to-case thermal resistance quickly and accurately?  So did my colleagues at MicReD back in 2004/2005 when they had to do contract measurement of over 80 power transistor packages. The usual answer is: read the relevant standard - such as MIL-883 or … Read More

thetaJC, thermal transient testing, Electronics Cooling, JEDEC, dual interface method, RthJC, T3ster, JESD51, junction-to-case thermal resistance

Power on an IC package, measure the resulting transient response of the junction temperature and from that infer a wealth of information about the structure of the package that the heat has to flow through. Such a methodology is at the heart of the Mechanical Analysis Division’s T3Ster(pronounced “trister”) product. Some simulation software vendors pitch their products as being able … Read More

MicReD, Electronics Cooling, package level thermal, T3ster