|
|
Nanoscale Thermal Simulation
|
|
 |
Today's analog and digital ICs can have very high power densities, with significant self- and mutual-heating of devices and interconnects, causing hazardous 3D temperature variations across the silicon surface and the metal layers. Without detailed and accurate temperature data, the designer must allow for thermal unknowns by increasing design margins, and re-spin the silicon in order to correct for any thermally induced circuit failures and performance degradations. The remedies are very costly. Gradient Design Automation pioneered accurate, fine-grain IC thermal analysis. CircuitFire and FireBolt, the company's software products, compute the temperatures within a die during the design process. The temperature data can provide early warnings for thermal hazards, such as hotspots and excessive temperature variations. The products fit into the standard analog and digital IC design flows, and the output can be used to help determine the thermal effects on critical aspects of IC designs, such as analog circuitry mismatch, electromigration, leakage current, switching speed, and relative timing paths.
Nanoscale Temperature Surface Plot.
|
|
Visit our booth at the 45th Design Automation Conference
in Anaheim, California.
Booth # 613 Please send email to: sales@gradient-da.com to schedule a demo session.
"We have deployed CircuitFire to IC designers in the High Performance Analog Division at TI. We have designers using it to predict peak temperature, temperature variation and the effects of temperature on electrical performance of critically matched devices. Thermal simulation has been used on process technologies ranging from standard CMOS to trench isolated SOI and BiCMOS processes."
Tom Vrotsos,
"Gradient's FireBolt with an integrated package thermal model is helping AMD to explore chip floorplan, fab process, and design scaling options in a unified manner. We're able to achieve thermal modeling resolution down to a single via which significantly enhances our electromigration avoidance capability."
Jim Brewer,
"We collaborated with Gradient on HeatWave, which is a full-chip transient electro-thermal simulator. Simulation results for a chip containing power transistors and temperature sensors, taken over a two second interval, correlated well with measured data.
Yves Depret, "Managing heat is important in high-power design. The thermal map of a circuit can be used as a floorplanning tool to reduce temperature deltas in sensitive areas of the design; this may translate to greater efficiency.
David Schwan, |
