Design automation of power integrated circuits in EDGE environment

Abstract

Presents SETIPIC, a software package to forecast the electrothermal interactions in the first design steps of power integrated circuits. To give a well-consistent interface with graphic tools to the designer, SETIPIC works under the EDGE CAD system. The software aspect of this integration into EDGE is explained. PICMOST, the thermal simulator used by SETIPIC to obtain the thermal distribution on the layout surface in a transient or stationary mode is also described. In particular, the method to take into account the chip environment (package...) with an automatic mesh to handle aleatory layout configurations is explained. Finally, some thermal simulation results are given.<>