SOLUTIONS

Temperature Enabling Simulations Virtual Thermography Service Free: ΔT Screening Call
“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. After successive simulation runs with HeatWave, a designer can look at the thermal map and make decisions about how the heat producing elements can be placed.”

David Schwan
Engineering Manager, CAD & Layout, Multi-Market Products Group, RF Micro Devices

Virtual Thermography Service

Have you ever cooled a chip to help debug unexplained behavior? Have you used thermal imaging to debug a chip problem?

Often design teams identify thermal risk factors in a design, but they are not ready to incur the capital and staffing cost to bring thermal simulation capability in-house. Gradient has designed the Virtual Thermography Service℠ offering to address this need.

What’s Included:

For a fixed price, Gradient temperature experts will perform the entire process of creating accurate, steady-state or time-varying temperature data, in the format required by your existing circuit simulator and analysis tools. This temperature data enables your simulator to determine the impact of temperature on your circuit's performance, reliability, and other electro-thermal effects in the chip -- before you tape out.

Gradient professionals will:

  • Identify the potential thermal hazards on a specific IC design, and create an analysis deliverable to address those hazards
  • Specify the required layout and package data, and manage the process of generating that data
  • Simulate your circuit using the industry’s most advanced thermal analysis software, Gradient HeatWave, and produce data for use by multiple departments within your organization.
  • Support your simulation team to import the data back into your circuit simulator

Two options: Snapshot or Transient

Depending on your design’s requirements, Gradient can perform either of two different virtual thermography analysis options:
  • Thermal “Snapshot”: Steady-state thermal analysis, for devices that operate at lower frequencies, or where time varying temperature effects are not expected to be significant
  • Transient Thermal Analysis: for devices that operate at higher frequencies, or when time varying temperature effects are expected

Virtual Thermography Benefits:

In comparison to purchasing new tools and performing temperature analysis in-house, virtual thermography lowers your risk by outsourcing the entire analysis task to thermal experts. You get the answers you need with fast turn-around time, and without the costs or time commitment for tool integration, training or operation.