FloTHERM.PCB
New paradigm in collaborative PCB thermal design
FloTHERM.PCB is a radical new collaboration tool for product marketing, electrical and mechanical engineers that accelerates the conceptual thermal design of printed-circuit boards.
Features and Benefits
Highlights
- Specialized menus for rapid creation of the functional block diagram.
- Derive physical layout directly from the functional block diagram, maintaining full consistency between the two representations as the design progresses.
- Powerful 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solver predicts airflow and temperature, for both sides of the board, in minutes.
- Fully-integrated library capability supporting JEDEC standards for component thermal models.
- Export/import board design information to and from EDA software via IDF file format.
Integration
With FloTHERM.PCB you can leverage your investment in other Mentor Graphics products. For example, you can import/export board information to and from FloTHERM for enclosure-level airflow/thermal analysis. In addition, you have access to two online tools, www.smartparts3D.com and www.flopack.com which contain ready-to-run thermal models for IC packages and other thermal parts as well as compact and detailed models for certain IC packages.
Multi-Disciplinary Functionality
Because of the nature of the product, the usage is often spread across multiple departments in order to receive the maximum benefit. Typical configurations of FloTHERM.PCB include:
- FloTHERM.PCB versions for each electrical and product marketing engineer
- One FloTHERM.PCB Simulator version for a team of electrical engineers and
- One FloTHERM.PCB Simulator version for the lead mechanical engineer
In a recent survey, 60% of mechanical engineers in electronics companies stated that thermal issues had forced board layout changes during the previous 12 months. Just one such re-spin costs many times the FloTHERM.PCB license fee.
Ease of Use
FloTHERM.PCB is compatible with most Windows operating systems. Reports can be generated either through HTML or Microsoft Word.
Application Examples
Attempting to satisfy an increasing number of PCB design constraints is putting more pressure than ever on designers. The risk of failure of either functional performance or reliability increases with each new generation of design. One of the fastest emerging design tradeoffs is between thermal compliance and signal integrity. High clock speed, coupled components need to be close together to ensure no signal degradation. Unfortunately, such components also dissipate significant power; thus, they need to be as far away from each other as possible to reduce component temperatures.
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The ability to accurately predict the thermal performance of a PCB early in the development process is becoming more critical than ever before. A key limitation of tools designed to simulate the performance of PCBs early in the design process has been their inability to take into account the effects on thermal conductivity of localized concentrations of copper. A recent improvement in these design tools has been the ability to model the effects of copper concentration on thermal conductivity in the board. The latest generation of PCB design tools makes it possible to model copper concentration at whatever level of detail is desired, down to the level of modeling each individual trace.
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Datasheet
- FloTHERM.PCB (PDF, 298kb)
Contact Mentor Graphics
- FloTHERM®.PCB Info Request or call toll free: 1-800-547-3000