Mentor Graphics Corporation

Siemens Industry Software Gmbh

Robin Bornoff

John Parry

Byron Blackmore

Joseph Charles Proulx

Andras Vass-Varnai

John Richard Wilson

Alan Davies

Aspects of the disclosed technology relate to techniques of improving heat sink designs based on systematic mass removal. A thermal simulation is performed to determine thermal property values for a heat sink design. The thermal property value of a portion of the heat sink design relates to the portion's contribution to thermal performance of the heat sink design. One or more portions of the heat sink design are selected based on the thermal property values and removed to generate a new heat sink design. The performing operation and the removing operation are repeated until one of one or more predetermined conditions is met.

Subtractive design for heat sink improvement

A thermal transient response simulation is performed to determine a total thermal resistance value for a structure having a plurality of thermal model elements. A plurality of thermal transient response simulations are also performed for the structure to determine changed total thermal resistance values by varying one of thermal resistance values of the thermal model elements. Thermal resistance values for the thermal model elements are then determined based on the total thermal resistance value and the changed total thermal resistance values. The structure function is divided into portions associated with the thermal model elements based on the thermal resistance values for the thermal model elements.

Determination of structure function feature correlation to thermal model element layers

Various aspects of a technology disclosed herein relate to thermal model obfuscation. A thermal model for a first assembly is received. An obfuscated thermal model is then generated from the thermal model. The generation comprises replacing name or names associated with one or more objects in the first assembly with obfuscated names. The obfuscated thermal model can be used in a thermal simulation of a second assembly, of which the first assembly is a component.

Thermal model obfuscation

A thermal transient response simulation is performed for a structure having a plurality of thermal model elements. The thermal transient response simulation determines a relation between transient thermal impedance of the structure and time and a relation between maximum temperature change of each of the thermal model elements and time. An onset time at which energy reaches each of the thermal model elements is determined based on the relation between maximum temperature change of each of the thermal model elements and time and a predetermined maximum temperature change threshold. An influence onset resistance value for each of the thermal model elements is determined by looking up a thermal resistance value corresponding to the onset time based on the relation between transient thermal impedance of the structure and time. A structural function is mapped based on the influence onset resistance value for each of the thermal model elements.

Single simulation-based structure function mapping

Techniques for employing an additive design process to design heat sinks are disclosed. A heat sink 'grows' through an iteration process. During each iteration step, an object is added to a location determined based on simulation. The criterion for the determination may be being a location having a highest fluid apparent surface temperature value or being a location having a highest bottleneck heat transfer characteristic value. The thermal performance of the newly derived structure is simulated. If a predetermined condition is met, the object is kept. Otherwise, the object is removed and the location is marked so that the same addition may not occur subsequently. The iteration process may be repeated.

Additive design of heat sinks

Techniques for determining one or more fluid flow characteristic values of a structure are disclosed. A fluid flow vector and a pressure gradient vector for a portion of the structure are determined, and a dot/cross product of the fluid flow vector with the pressure gradient vector is obtained to provide a fluid flow characteristic value. The fluid flow characteristic value can be used for modifying the structure to improve fluid flow through the structure.

Identification of fluid flow bottlenecks

Techniques for determining one or more heat transfer characteristic values of a structure, such as an electronic device, are disclosed. A heat flux vector magnitude and a temperature gradient vector magnitude for a portion of the structure are determined, and a product of the heat flux vector magnitude with the temperature gradient vector magnitude is obtained. More particularly, the dot product of the heat flux vector magnitude with the temperature gradient vector magnitude may be obtained to provide a bottleneck heat transfer characteristic value. Alternately or additionally, a cross product (or related operation) of the heat flux vector magnitude with the temperature gradient vector magnitude is obtained to produce a shortcut heat transfer characteristic value.

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Herefordshire, United Kingdom

Robin Bornoff