Mentor Blogs

Just a quick note that I will be participating in an EDN Editorial Webcast on Friday, June 25, 2010.  There are four panelists that offer up some valuable insight into the challenges associated with the reliability of LEDS.  LEDS are a relatively new technology when compared to other semiconductor devices and standards for testing and reliability prediction are not yet universally accepted. You can … Read More

MCPCB, Reliability, LEDs, Thermal Testing, Thermal Design

Some time back we were testing a flip-chip package in a top-cold-plate harness to measure the package junction-to-case thermal resistance (ΘJC, RJC).   We performed a number of tests where we were consistently measuring a higher value of thermal resistance than was reported by the vendor.   How could we and the vendor both be correct?!? To understand this further I built an analysis model to study … Read More

Thermal Design, Thermal Testing, Electronics Cooling, Heat Spreading

When I first started working on electronics cooling it was at the end of what people sometimes refer to as the ‘bipolar age’. CMOS had become established, paving the way for PCs with very low power consumption. The cooling challenge was just to get the heat out of the box, making sure there were no major dead spots in the flow that would lead to overheating. Typical problems tended to be quite obvious, … Read More

Thermal Design, Thermal Testing, Electronics Cooling, FloEFD, FloVENT

“A picture paints a thousand words”. Probably not as quickly though. Wouldn’t the world be a different place if we had evolved the ability to communicate via richly contented drawings? Likely we’d have more fingers, smaller ears and would war less due to less frequent commnunication misunderstandings. FloTHERM’s CFD simulation technology creates a wealth of data that reflects what happens in and around … Read More

Thermal Design, Thermal Testing, Electronics Cooling, FloVENT

Recently I was thinking about how Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) accelerates all phases of Thermal Design.  I’m sure it is debatable but here is what I came up with for the phases of Thermal Design .  The arrows could be looped over and back and round and round but I think the flow is reasonable. The basic 4 step design process that leads to the desired Design Approval depicted is: Design … Read More

Electronics Cooling, Thermal Design, CFD, Thermal Testing