Mechanical Analysis Blog

Two different package styles, two very different thermal responses when a extruded plate fin heatsink is placed on each. At the very least a FloTHERM simulation can be used to observe the thermal behaviour of a product concept, beyond that it can be used to understand *why* the thermal behaviour is what it is. In Part 1 we saw that the BGA type package benefited from an 81% drop of junction temperature … Read More

Heatsink, Electronics Cooling, Jessica Alba and Mena Suvari and George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio

A common enough question. Heatsinks are often perceived to be the magic answer to all electronics cooling challenges. They should be called ‘area extenders’ as heat does not just disappear into them. Heat spreads throughout a heatsink passing to the air over a much larger area than it would otherwise do. Air can then do its magic, whisking the heat away thus keeping the electronics that … Read More

Heatsink, Electronics Cooling

I don’t know about you but I read. A lot… It’s almost as if I’ve got an unquenchable thirst for information. It all started when I was 6 during a school break. I was bored and pestered my mom one too many times. In those pre-Nintendo days, she unceremoniously dumped me in my father’s study and told me to read a book.  I couldn’t reach most of the books on the shelves but my oldest sister had left her … Read More

fluid flow simulation, Engineering Edge

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

By way of an apology for the more verbose blogs I’ve been issuing recently I’d like to present you with a blog that serves no other purpose than to show a pretty picture. CFD as an acronym has quite a few different interpretations. Contracts for Difference if you’re into your financials. Colour For Directors if you’re in marketing. Cheats, Frauds and Deceivers if you’re … Read More

Electronics Cooling, CFD

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

You all know what a chatterbox I can be when I’m excited about something. So believe you me when I say the past few months have been excruciatingly hard for me. I’ve been sitting on some pretty big news and I’ve been itching to tell the world all about it.  Now that the cat is officially out of the bag, there’s no holding me back… FloTHERM XT as the enabling technology in the EDA/MDA design flow. The … Read More

Design Engineer, FloEFD, CFD, Thermal, FloTHERM XT

The JESD51-14 standard was published in November 2010, prepared by the  JEDEC JC-15 Committee on Thermal Characterization. It outlines a new process to measure what is the most common IC package thermal metric, Theta_jc. This is the thermal resistance between the die and the package case face. More specifically the face of the package that is to be cooled by an external heatsinking method. Theta_jc … Read More

JEDEC, Electronics Cooling, JESD51-14, Theta_jc

A few months ago one of my colleagues showed me a picture of the Jaguar F-Type. In case you haven’t heard, it’s the newest model and their return to the 2-seater luxury market. I love Jaguar cars but I never felt old enough to drive one. Until I saw a picture of the F-Type. This beast is a thing of beauty. So when three weeks ago the same colleague told me that a car magazine was looking for a handful … Read More

Design Engineer

The temperature rise that electronic components attain in operation is due to 3 things. The power that they dissipate, the ambient temperature surrounding the product and the various thermal bottlenecks that the heat passes through on its journey from the source to the ambient. An accurate simulation requires all 3 aspects to be modelled correctly. In terms of the bottlenecks, conductive resistance … Read More

Electronics Cooling, DynTIM, thermal conductivity, TIM

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

Hello Everyone This is a bit of a follow up to my previous blog about the FloVENT analysis of the Mentor Graphics Data Centers in Wilsonville, OR and Shannon, Ireland.  http://www.mentor.com/products/mechanical/blog/post/mentor-graphics-data-center-design-using-cfd-modeling-fc6dbfc3-ec40-431a-8628-67375c2e946a Well the one in Shannon, Ireland has been online for a while now, and our Wilsonville, … Read More

CFD, Computational Fluid Dynamics, ASME, Plano, Texas, Dallas, Data Center

Hello Everybody   Previously, I co-authored a semitherm paper on the use of our HVAC CFD tool, FloVENT, on the design of a Mentor Graphics data center.  Recently I have seen this topic republished in the data center journal with the title “EDA Vendor takes its Own Advice on Data Center Design”.  I find this topic interesting, so I thought I’d blog about this and break from my typical … Read More

Raised Floor, Rack, Semitherm, CFD, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Cabinet, HVAC, Mentor Graphics, Data Center, FloVENT

I’ve never really been a fan of the color pink. If you look thru my childhood pictures you’ll find me wearing pink clothes (chosen by my lovely mom) but in every one of those pictures you also find my head slightly dipped down, defiantly looking into the camera and pouting. Not a happy bunny. As soon as I was old enough to make my own decisions regarding clothes, pink was banished from my wardrobe. … Read More

CFD, ROI, CAD-Embedded

When I used to work in San Francisco, I had a lovely office. My window had a breath taking view of the Bay Bridge (this is while the Gap HQ building was under construction so I had a completely unhindered view of the bridge and the bay). One day I was sitting at my desk when I noticed something moving fast out of the corner of my eye. I looked up from my screen to see the magnificent Blue Angels announcing … Read More