ABSTRACT
The goal of thennal perfonnance analysis is typically to detennine junction temperatures of electronic components for reliability assessment and to ensure that manufacturer's ratings are met. An additional, but related, goal is to evaluate toplevel thennal management for use in detennining environmental and cooling requirements. Electronic packaging configurations are typically increasing in perfonnance and speed while decreasing in size, resulting in greatly increased power density. This increased power density results in increased internal temperatures which can reduce reliability and life if heat is not removed from the hardware. Heat can be removed by conduction, convection, radiation or a combination of the three methods. Any thennal analysis of electronic packaging must detennine the thennal path and the applicable heat transfer mechanisms. Thennal analysis of electronic packaging configurations can be broken down into two categories, steady-state and transient thennal analysis.
