Siemens Digital Industries Software is bringing an innovative approach of sharing accurate thermal models of integrated circuit (IC) packages to the electronics supply chain. Accordingly, the main advantages are protecting intellectual property, enhancing supply chain collaboration, and accuracy of models for steady state. In addition, it also provides transient thermal analysis to enhance design studies.

The new technology will be present in the latest updates to Simcenter™ Flotherm™ software for electronics cooling simulation from the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio. The breakthrough Embeddable Boundary Condition Independent Reduced Order Model (BCI-ROM) technology is the answer. It allows a semiconductor company to generate an accurate model that can be shared with their clients. Particularly, for use in down-stream high-fidelity 3D thermal analysis without exposing the IC’s internal physical structure.

Detailed Thermal Models in IC Design

Taiwanese SoC maker MediaTek Inc. has taken advantage of Simcenter Flotherm to drive efficiency in its collaboration with customers. Particularly, Jimmy Lin, Technical Manager, MediaTek said, “Embeddable BCI-ROM is a great way to share our thermal models with our customers. It has several key features: easy generation, confidentiality, low error rate, and suitability for steady-state and transient applications.”

Today’s electronics often have heat dissipation challenges that need resolution during design. Particularly, due to higher power density influenced by the miniaturization of semiconductor packages and electronic systems. Also, the trends for thin-form consumer products, or demanding processing requirements.

As a result, the need for more detailed thermal models to help solve thermal management design tasks is growing. Increasingly, modern IC package architectures such as 2.5D, 3D IC, or chiplet-based designs have highly complex thermal management challenges that require 3D thermal simulation both during their development and during integration of IC packages into electronics products.

“Given electronics supply chain pressures and the growing complexity of IC packages, barriers to collaboration and thermal analysis efficiency during design must be eliminated where possible to support competitive development,” said Jean-Claude Ercolanelli, Senior Vice President, Simulation and Test Solutions, Siemens Digital Industries Software.

In addition, Ercolanelli said, “Our breakthrough new technology enables accurate thermal models to be shared securely within the electronics supply chain without exposing sensitive intellectual property. (Thus), allowing all parties to resolve thermal issues faster and bring advanced products to market more quickly.”

More information about Siemens’ Embeddable BCI-ROM technology and how it can enable more efficient and secure collaboration is available at the Siemens website.