Mentor Blogs

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

It’s been a while since I posted on the BBQ. It’s not laziness per se, rather a combination of laziness and working on simulating the BBQ. This is just a quick post to point out a recent article in Electronic Design Magazine on the link between thermal management and product reliability which you can find here. Traditionally companies have sought to improve product reliability by reducing steady-state … Read More

Reliability, Thermal Management, Electronics Cooling

For some reason, the powers that be have decided to do roadworks on every major road leading out of my area of  London. That means traffic has been diverted to two minor roads. Fair enough as the leaking Victorian water pipes need to be replaced. But what I don’t understand is why they all have to be done at the same time and the same exact section of the A4 that was dug up for the entire length … Read More

LED, Fluid Dynamics, CFD, Thermal Management, Heatsink, Light-Emitting Diode