Mentor Blogs

I’ve got the WIFI blues. Our American skiing buddies (whom we haven’t seen for three years) are making the great trek across the Atlantic ocean for a ski vacation in France. Among the usual list of requirements (good snow and nice range of terrains and activities) was “must have WIFI”. They were happy to compromise on transfer time, travel by car/air/sea/train and even schlep bags on public transport. … Read More

WiFi, CFD, electroincs, antenna, Solar, Thermal Management, ROI

If you’re involved in CFD in education in any way this will be of interest to you. Since shortly after Flomerics were acquired by Mentor Graphics we’ve been working towards getting out products into Mentor’s Higher Education Program (HEP), and we’ve finally got it done. To my knowledge, the availability of potentially millions of dollars worth of commercial CFD software, plus support and training, … Read More

Mentor HEP, Higher Education, Thermal Design, Concurrent CFD, Education, CFD, Thermal Management, FloVENT, Upfront CFD, Electronics Cooling, FloEFD

“Authorities in the US have instructed Sony to conduct a recall of its Vaio laptops, after problems with overheating were reported.” started this article on the BBC’s web site. There is a saying, ” the news is never as good or as bad as it is first reported”. And so it is with this story. It’s not a product recall, as the story later goes on to explain, but what grabbed my attention was that the problem … Read More

Design Process, Electronics Cooling, CFD, Thermal Design, Thermal Management, Reliability

I’ve been remiss in not posting for a couple of weeks, so I’m trying to get back in the saddle. I’ve been working on other things that have taken up a fair bit of time. One is a web seminar on heatsinks – Heatsink 201 – Even More about Heat Sinks which follows on from Alexandra Francois-Saint-Cyr’s very successful Heat Sink 101 web seminar. Back in March I posted about IBM’s work on liquid cooling … Read More

FloVENT, Google, ASHRAE, Building HVAC, Air Cooling, Green building design, Data Center, Liquid Cooling, Electronics Cooling, CFD, Thermal Management, Cost Saving

It was very interesting to read this article about the work IBM are undertaking together with École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) on a 3D stacked architecture for multiple cores. The four year collaborative project, called CMOSAIC, promises to deliver an interconnection density from 100 to 10,000 connections per square millimetre … Read More

LEDs, LED Cooling, Liquid Cooling, CFD, Cold Plate, Automotive LEDs, Thermal Management, Fluid Dynamics, Electronics Cooling, FloEFD

I’m just back from a very productive SEMI-THERM Conference where we launched our new FloTHERM IC product. We had meetings with the editors of 5 leading electronics magazines to coincide with the launch, which was made at our vendor presentation during the exhibition at the start of Tuesday afternoon. Well done to all involved! If you want to see what others are saying about FloTHERM IC check out the … Read More

Thermal Design, SEMI-THERM Conference, Thermal Management, DELPHI Model, Electronics Cooling, 2-Resistor Model, JEDEC, JEDEC JC15, FloTHERM IC

Just a very quick post to alert you to the new ElectronicsCooling Magazine web site.  We’ve updated the look of the site to improve navigation ahead of the relaunch of the printed magazine. Here’s just some of the features of the new site: New look and feel Search Improved Article and Content Navigation by author; category (Calculation Corner, New Products, Technical Brief); channel (Industries, … Read More

Thermal Management, Thermal Design, FloEFD, FloTHERM.PCB, Electronics Cooling, Design Process, FloTHERM.PACK, CFD

Back in June I posted ‘Air – Is it Running Out of Gas?’ and put forward the view that for general computing applications air isn’t running out of gas just yet. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is that I suspect the general public has concerns about leaks. Most people have passed cars stuck on the highway with a blown heater hose and seen water on the ground, and I’ve had an automotive water … Read More

Liquid Cooling, Fluent Design, Thermal Management, Asetek, CAD Embedded, Apple iMac, Upfront Analysis, Electronics Cooling, FloEFD, Upfront CFD, CFD, Concurrent CFD

I was on a conference call and WebEx yesterday with the NAFEMS CFD Working Group, of which Mentor Graphics is a member. One of the people on the call had a lot of background noise on his phone, which turned out to be a due to a fan by his desk to keep his computer cool. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a memory hungry, CPU intensive activity so I guess he was running a fairly substantial case. … Read More

Thermal Management, Thermal Design, Upfront Analysis, Concurrent CFD, Design Process, CFD, Upfront CFD, Kolb's Learning Styles, X-ray Vision, Electronics Cooling, Experiential Learning

I’m off to SEMI-THERM later this month. SEMI-THERM is one of the premier thermal management conferences and has the best exhibition by far. The conference runs from 21-25 February, the first two days of which are devoted to professional short courses delivered by a number of leading names in electronics cooling, and past recipients of the IEEE’s THERMI Award. Short courses at SEMI-THERM 26 are eligible … Read More

Thermal Standards, JEDEC JC15, Electronics Cooling, Thermal Design, Thermal Management, SEMI-THERM Conference, SEMI-THERM Exhibition

Mentor’s Thermal Design Software Is The Best. OK, say’s who? It’s the conclusion from some independent research carried out by Aberdeen Research Group. Last time I showed that Aberdeen had found that Mentor’s customers are almost 3 times faster at completing thermal verification than users of other tools. Let’s take a look at why that is. Aberdeen found evidence of what users of other tools were doing … Read More

Thermal Management, Thermal Design, Design Flow, Design Process, CFD, FloTHERM.PCB, PCB Respin, Electronics Cooling

It could save your company a shed load of time and money… Interested? OK, here’s some research by Aberdeen Group, which I presented at several of the recent Solutions Expos. First off, the Mechanical Analysis Division’s customers choose Mentor’s tools because they recognise them as being the best. They don’t just make do with tools available as part of another software suite, as shown below in the … Read More

Thermal Management, Concurrent CFD, Cost Saving, CFD, Fluent Design, Thermal Design, Design Process, Electronics Cooling

Thermal headroom is a concept I’ve been pushing for a few years, but I guess many people aren’t familiar with it, so I thought some additional commentary would be appropriate. Here goes: What I’ve drawn looks pretty simple. Starting from the ambient we can attribute to total temperature rise for some critical IC to a temperature rise in the air, the PCB and/or heat sink, then the temperature rise in … Read More

Thermal Management, Thermal Headroom, Design Flow, Design Process, CFD, FloTHERM.PACK, Thermal Design, FloEFD

Just a quick post to let you know yours truly will be giving a presentation on: Thermal Design: A Key Part of the Electronics Design Flow At the UK Solutions Expo at the Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon on 12th November. Miniaturization continues to increase power densities at all packaging levels, forcing design teams to identify new methods of cooling. The challenge remains consistent at all levels … Read More

Thermal Design, Shortening Design Time, Thermal Management, Electronics Cooling, Cost Saving, PCB Respin, Reliability, FloTHERM.PACK, FloTHERM.PCB

I’d expected to be posting about FloTHERM.PACK this time, but I thought I’d better let you know what I’ve been working on the last couple of weeks instead. I’ve been putting together the Mechanical Analysis Division’s presentations for the European Solutions Expos in Finland, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Egypt amongst other places, plus the Alcatel Thales forum in Paris and U2U in Munich. Details of … Read More

Thermal Design, Solutions Expo, Thermal Management, FloTHERM.PACK, Design Process, Saving Cost, Saving Time, FloTHERM.PCB, PCB Respin