Compact thermal network model: Realization and reduction

Abstract

Thermal design in sub-100 nm technologies imposes significant challenges to the CAD designers. A Compact Thermal Model (CTM) is proposed to represent the package as a network of nodes. The discrete models resulting from, for example, the finite element method (FEM) are usually very large. In order to handle this size of full models, the CTM is condensed using Static Matrix Condensation methodology where the system matrices obtained by the spatial discretization of heat transfer partial differential equation (PDE) are reduced by condensing the heat sources, surface nodes and internal nodes. This method reduces the complexity and at the same time preserves the accuracy of the model.