New methodologies, which help slash the time needed to convey a new product from the design lab to the marketplace, often correlate directly to competitive advantage and profitability. Representative of such new and powerful technologies is Flopack, a timesaving, Web-based application designed to expedite the running of thermal simulations in Flomerics Flotherm thermal analysis software. Using a simple Web browser to access and run Flopack, an engineer can quickly and easily build detailed three-dimensional thermal models of a wide range of IC packages. These models are then downloaded to the engineer s computer or workstation for direct import into a local copy of Flotherm. On average, these devices operate at maximum ambient temperatures of 70 o or 85 o C in still air environments.
Thermal considerations are very critical from a packaging standpoint.
Once in Flopack, I find the desired package style and fill in an online table with dimensional and other data about the package and the silicon chip. Flopack then creates an IC package model file, which I download and import into my Flotherm model. If I happen to need a unique package, it is easy to add such features as heat sinks or heat spreaders to the Flopack model. Peterson recounts an example of the timesavings possible with Flopack. Building this model took me an entire day at least 8 hours.