Mentor Blogs

In the royal family of thermal IC package modelling types, a detailed model is King. All critical 3D geometry is modelled explicitly, no abstraction into a thermal resistor equivalent model, no hiding all the proprietary design information inside either. Pros and cons of detailed models I covered a few years ago in this blog. Packaged ICs are complex, constructed of many parts, with many different material … Read More

Electronics Cooling, calibration, Package Model, T3ster

Electronics cooling simulation was born out of the world of CFD, rather fully conjugate heat transfer simulation where convective, radiative and conductive affects are considered concurrently. Back in the day much talk was had about turbulence modelling, convective discretisation schemes and linear equation solvers, all typical CFD subjects but somewhat out of place in the context of what became the … Read More

CTM, Electronics Cooling, CFD, T3ster

Before you sell it, or commission it, you want to be sure that it works. Monies have been spent on getting things this far, some of it on you via your overhead and your expansive salary (yeh, ok, I hear you). Expectation is that your organisation will make more money back. Last thing you want is to have your product fail, have to be tweaked, fixed, respun, redesigned or canned. What you’d like … Read More

T3ster, Electronics Cooling, TERALED

Back in December I heard something on the radio that made me both sad and happy at the same time. It turns out that the last neon sign in Piccadilly Square in London was to be turned off by the end of the year. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing London at night, Piccadilly Sq is a sight to behold (for a picture click here ) The neon sign in question had been in use since 1987 and … Read More

FloEFD, CFD, Thermal Characterization, T3ster

‘Bits stuck onto other bits’, a succinct definition of an electronic product, if not a product that contains electronics. Soldering is the method of choice for getting the components to attach to the pcb, the layered board that contains the metallic traces connecting component pins to other component pins. Rivets, welds, screws or bolts for the chassis, some form of gluing or sticky adhesion … Read More

Electronics Cooling, CFD, thermal chokepoint, T3ster, thermal bottleneck

LED based lighting is now a very hot topic (believe me, in electronic thermal management circles that used to be funny, the first few times). Control of packaged IC junction temperatures will always have a bearing on reliability but for LEDs thermal also effects functional performance in terms of brightness and colour. The hotter they get, the dimmer they appear. A particular contradiction in the context … Read More

LED, Electronics Cooling, TERALED, LEDs, T3ster

Hardware and software tools that help engineers deal effectively with temperature and heat transfer offer significant value, since increased design complexity and smaller form factors create heat management problems that represent one of the biggest challenges in electronics today. Temperature is understood to be the key accelerator in the majority of reliability failures and IEEE Standard 1413 (for … Read More

Heat Transfer, IEEE Standard 1413, FloTHERM software, thermal simulation and analysis, thermal transient tester, Mentor Graphics, T3ster

‘Rubbish In -> Rubbish Out’ is a well accepted fact in the world of simulation. Regardless of the technical capabilities of your thermal simulation tool, the accuracy of prediction will always be tightly coupled to the accuracy of the input data. The most accurate thermal  IC package model is a so called ‘detailed’ model where all the internal construction is represented explicitly … Read More

Electronics Cooling, detailed thermal IC package models, T3ster, FloTHERM PACK, strucutre functions

For the past few months I’ve been talking about our user meetings – the Mechanical Analysis Division User2User meetings which are taking place all over the world. The venue was built at the site of an old castle. I just came back from the meeting in Germany and I can quite honestly say that it was one of the most energizing meetings I’ve attended in a long time. This was a meeting of “firsts”: the … Read More

Mechanical U2U, FloEFD, T3ster

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

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

I have always admired the medical diagnostic tools, especially imaging. X-rays have a long history, starting with Conrad Röntgen back in the 19th century. In fact in Hungary x-raying is called “röntgening” - yes, like this; the phrase became part of our language as an ordinary word; both as a verb (to take somebody’s x-ray image) or as an adjective to specifically name this very high … Read More

non-destructive analysis, structural analysis, die attach void, thermal transient testing, structure function, T3ster

Today is the 2nd Sunday of Advent. I am preparing for Christmas. Since my childhood I have been really fond of Christmas-trees and candles on the tree. But my father has always been afraid of fire, therefore candles were lit only when my parents were present. It changed  with the strings of  bulbs. They introduced a new game: when decorating the tree, one had to test the string since the low voltage … Read More

LED reliability, FloEFD, T3ster, LED testing, LM80 tests

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

It seems that my previous post resonated deeply with everyone – I received a lot of offline comments and my post inspired two of my colleagues (Boris and Andras) to do their own blog posts. This doesn’t shock me because Thanksgiving week is one of the busiest travel periods in the States so everyone is thinking about flying. So I thought we should stay with the subject for one more day and look at it … Read More

T3ster, Thermal, FloEFD, CFD, LED, QA, FloVENT, hybrid engine