Patent ID: 8029186

Claim:
A method for thermally characterizing thermal characteristics of a cooling device used for cooling an electronic device, the method comprising: operating a cooling device thermally coupled to a heat pipe having a surface to receive a test chip, the test chip including a heater patterned on a circuitry side of the test chip, the heater being separate from operational circuitry of the test chip; thermally coupling a first surface of the test chip to the surface of the heat pipe; selectively applying a directed heat source directly to the test chip and a bias heat to the test chip to locally heat more than one region on a second surface of the test chip to test more than one hot spot, wherein the second surface is the circuitry side of the test chip, wherein the heater provides the bias heat, independent of operating the test chip, to the test chip while the directed heat source is applied directly to the test chip; for each application of the directed heat source, using a temperature detector to measure a temperature distribution on the second surface of the test chip; and using the temperature distribution to perform a thermal characterization of the cooling device during operation with the test chip thermally coupled to the surface of the heat pipe, wherein the thermal characterization at least characterizes the cooling device with respect to removing heat from the test chip.