Background

With the miniaturization of system architecture, the continuous increase in chip power consumption, and the significant increase in heat flux density, electrothermal analysis is becoming increasingly important in system design.

In board-level circuits, the electrothermal mainly comes from high-power devices, PCB copper skins, and chips. The current passing through the conductor generates Joule heat, the increase in temperature makes the conductivity smaller, the lower the conductivity, the greater the conductor resistance, which will generate more Joule heat. At the same time, it will increase the DC voltage drop during the electrical transmission process, reducing the voltage reaching the load. When the temperature rises, the current-carrying capacity of PCB wiring and vias will also decrease, which may cause the local current density to be too large and cause the board to burn. Therefore, it is very necessary to conduct electrothermal co-simulation analysis in system design, which can improve the electrical reliability and thermal reliability of the system, and avoid problems such as device failure and unstable electrical performance caused by electrothermal.

Solution

Notus platform from Xpeedic provides an electrothermal co-simulation analysis solution based on PCB boards and package structures, which can consider the effects of device heat and Joule heat at the same time, and accurately evaluate the temperature changes of the system. The streamlined interface settings make it easy for engineers to quickly simulate and analyze the current-carrying capacity of PCB copper skins and vias. The software supports setting equivalent resistance or material characteristic heat source models and has built-in various different radiator templates. The thermal analysis process also supports the extraction of package thermal resistance, IGBT template analysis, and other functions. Engineers can set heat source materials, size, device height, wind speed, convection coefficient, etc. based on actual conditions. The simulation results are diverse, the statistical table displays DC results (VRM voltage, SINK voltage, via current, via current density, power consumption) and the maximum and minimum temperatures of the thermal device; the interface cloud map displays voltage, current density distribution, heat distribution, and thermal stress, etc.; the result report can be exported, including the power tree and voltage drop results, electrothermal results and voltage, electrothermal distribution cloud map of each layer, etc.

Notus electrothermal simulation can quickly predict the performance of products from the perspectives of electricity and heat, reducing the optimization cycle of products.