GeneralThermalForceModelwithExperimentalStudies.docVIP

General Thermal Force Model with Experimental Studies Jing Lee Department of Electronic Engineering Southern Taiwan University of Technology Tainan, Taiwan 701, R.O.C. Email: leejing@.tw Abstract Thermal force has proven to be a useful concept for managing the package-level thermal placement problem. However, the previous thermal force model is based on insulated edge boundary condition, thus it is only suitable to face-cooled packages. A general thermal force model is proposed to extend the applicability of the thermal force to cover general cooling conditions by introducing the concept of the heat transparency of a boundary, . By managing , the present method generates a series of thermal-force-equilibrium placements fitting to situations from face-cooled to edge-cooled packages. Experimental results indicate that for generating the reliability-best placements the best ’s are in the range for face-cooled packages and in the range for the volumetric-cooled packages. For edge-cooled packages, the best ’s are the largest values of that can achieve convergent thermal-force-equilibrium placements. Index Terms—Force-directed algorithm, reliability, thermal force, thermal placement. INTRODUCTION Placement is the process of arranging circuit components on a layout surface such that multiple, possibly conflicting, design objectives can be satisfied [1]. Historically, placement techniques have been developed primarily on the basis of routability. Sherwani [2] provides a summary of the classic techniques. But with the increasing demand for high quality and reliable performance over time, techniques to address placement for reliability, which is known as the thermal placement problem, become necessary [3], [4]. The thermal placement problem occurs at three different levels: system-level, board-level, and package-level. At system-level, the placement problem is to place all the subsystems together so that the volume occupied is minimized. At the same time, the heat dissipat