Thermal Modeling Improvements using substrate ECAD integration

Abstract

With requirements of higher power density and smaller package size, thermal management of electronic packages has become increasingly challenging since last decade. With several design parameters playing an important role in evaluation of thermal characterization parameter, design approximations can lead to significant error. Substrate design is a critical aspect of the thermal model and the current state-of-the-art varies from approximate copper percentage inclusions to manually building traces to capture important geometrical features. Typically, these methods are prone to approximation errors and are also time consuming for building geometric models. An alternate method proposed is to use direct substrate ECAD integration in the package model that significantly improves the thermal modeling efficiency.