Intro and technology concepts
- The demand for high-performance microprocessors has escalated power dissipation and heat flux at the silicon level.
- High Si temperature causes various problems, such as increased leakage, acceleration of failure mechanisms, and influence of timing failures.
- The tests must be conducted to obtain the necessary data to show any gaps between the vendor’s spec and the actual product.
- The desire for small form-factor chassis and the demand for very low and very high Silicon operating temperatures in new car industry specifications raise the thermal solution challenge to new levels.
- Silicon validation platforms are built to validate Processors, Chipsets, and PCBs in the temperature range of -40c to 125c to ensure quality and reliability.
- This validation phase is a crucial step in releasing the product to market.
- Recently, it has become challenging to design a forcing thermal solution for high-speed processors, Network components, Graphic cards, Memory voltage regulators, etc.
- Thermal-related effects are considered a major roadblock in the design of next-generation microprocessors and PCBs.
Current cooling Technology for Si validation
Liquid or Air cooling
is commonly used to cool CPUs as well as other computer components. It usually consists of a CPU liquid block, a pump, and a heat exchanger (mostly a radiator and fan). Advantage is low cost. Liquid cooling allows quieter operation (potentially fan less), or improved processor speeds.
Phase change cooling
technology (vapor compression) is suitable when a very low temprature is desired, efficiency is much higher and does not need cooling liquid to remove the heat. Disadvantage of phase change technology is higher cost for initial system purchase but it is very energy efficient – for long term usage.
Thermal Electrical Cooler
(TEC-Known also as Peltier cooling). Advantage is low cost, disadvantage is that it can’t always remove the amount of heat capacity needed at very low temperatures and it’s efficiency is very low (~30%) .
