Thermal Solver Delivers Electrical-Thermal Co-Simulation

Date
09/18/2019

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Innovative multi-physics technology furthers Cadence’s expansion into fast-growing system analysis and design market

A temperature profile of 3D structures inside a package with metal interconnects,
as generated by the Cadence Celsius Thermal Solver

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. expanded its presence in the system analysis and design market with the introduction of the Cadence Celsius Thermal Solver, the industry’s first complete electrical-thermal co-simulation solution for the full hierarchy of electronic systems from ICs to physical enclosures. Following the successful launch of the Clarity 3D Solver earlier this year, the Celsius Thermal Solver is the second innovative product in Cadence’s new system analysis initiative. Based on a production-proven, massively parallel architecture that delivers up to 10X faster performance than legacy solutions without sacrificing accuracy, the Celsius Thermal Solver seamlessly integrates with Cadence IC, package and PCB implementation platforms. This enables new system analysis and design insights and empowers electrical design teams to detect and mitigate thermal issues early in the design process—reducing electronic system development iterations.

IC and electronic systems companies, particularly those incorporating 3D-IC packaging, face tremendous thermal challenges that can cause late-stage design modifications and iterations and derail project schedules. As the electronics industry moves toward smaller, faster, smarter and more complex products with greater power density, time-consuming thermal transient analysis techniques must be deployed together with traditional steady-state analysis to address multiple power profiles and increased heat dissipation. Further complicating the process, traditional simulators require the electronics and enclosures being modeled to be substantially simplified, resulting in reduced accuracy.

The Celsius Thermal Solver utilizes innovative multi-physics technology to address these challenges. By combining finite element analysis (FEA) for solid structures with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for fluids, the Celsius Thermal Solver enables complete system analysis in a single tool. When using the Celsius Thermal Solver in conjunction with the Clarity 3D Solver, Voltus IC Power Integrity and Sigrity technology for PCB and IC packaging, engineering teams can combine electrical and thermal analysis and simulate the flow of both electricity and heat for a more accurate system-level thermal simulation than legacy tools. In addition, the Celsius Thermal Solver performs both static (steady-state) and dynamic (transient) electrical-thermal co-simulations based on the actual flow of electrical power in advanced 3D structures, providing visibility into real-world system behavior.

By empowering electronics design teams to analyze thermal issues early and share ownership of thermal analysis, the Celsius Thermal Solver reduces design re-spins and enables new analysis and design insights not possible with legacy solutions. In addition, the Celsius Thermal Solver accurately simulates large systems with detailed granularity for any object of interest and is the first solution capable of modeling structures as small as the IC and its power distribution together with structures as large as the chassis.

The Celsius Thermal Solver supports Cadence’s Intelligent System Design strategy, enabling system innovation. It is built on matrix solver technology that is production proven in the recently announced Clarity 3D Solver and the Voltus IC Power Integrity Solution. Optimized for cloud environments, the Celsius Thermal Solver’s massively parallel architecture delivers up to 10X cycle time improvements compared to legacy solutions with high accuracy and unlimited scalability.

Availability

The Celsius Thermal Solver is currently being used in production by select customers and is in general availability now.

For more information, visit www.cadence.com.

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