Layout based 3D thermal simulations of integrated circuits components

Abstract

In this paper a three-dimensional (3D) thermal simulations of basic integrated circuit (IC) components are presented. The layout of the real Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) generated in CAD CADENCE software was loaded into the CFD-ACE environment, where 3D thermal simulations were done. The influence of many heating points was considered in simulations. Comparison among several cooling conditions was also made and presented in the paper. Also the importance of logic circuits thermal simulations in case of their thermal parameters estimation, an approximation of potentially thermally unstable areas, and a redesigning of a logic circuit due to its thermal strength are shown in this paper. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.