Co-simulation solution meets electrical-thermal challenges

Based on a production-proven, massively parallel architecture that delivers up to 10X faster performance than legacy solutions without sacrificing accuracy, the Celsius Thermal Solver seamlessly integrates with Cadence IC, package and PCB implementation platforms.

This enables new system analysis and design insights and empowers electrical design teams to detect and mitigate thermal issues early in the design process—reducing electronic system development iterations.

IC and electronic systems companies, particularly those incorporating 3D-IC packaging, face tremendous thermal challenges that can cause late-stage design modifications and iterations and derail project schedules.

As the electronics industry moves toward smaller, faster, smarter and more complex products with greater power density, time-consuming thermal transient analysis techniques must be deployed together with traditional steady-state analysis to address multiple power profiles and increased heat dissipation.

Further complicating the process, traditional simulators require the electronics and enclosures being modelled to be substantially simplified, resulting in reduced accuracy.

The Celsius Thermal Solver utilises innovative multi-physics technology to address these challenges.

By combining finite element analysis (FEA) for solid structures with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for fluids, the Celsius Thermal Solver enables complete system analysis in a single tool.

When using the Celsius Thermal Solver in conjunction with the Clarity 3D Solver, Voltus IC Power Integrity and Sigrity technology for PCB and IC packaging, engineering teams can combine electrical and thermal analysis and simulate the flow of both electricity and heat for a more accurate system-level thermal simulation than legacy tools.

In addition, the Celsius Thermal Solver performs both static (steady-state) and dynamic (transient) electrical-thermal co-simulations based on the actual flow of electrical power in advanced 3D structures, providing visibility into real-world system behaviour.

By empowering electronics design teams to analyse thermal issues early and share ownership of thermal analysis, the Celsius Thermal Solver reduces design re-spins and enables new analysis and design insights not possible with legacy solutions.

In addition, it accurately simulates large systems with detailed granularity for any object of interest and is the first solution capable of modelling structures as small as the IC and its power distribution together with structures as large as the chassis.

The Celsius Thermal Solver supports Cadence’s Intelligent System Design strategy, enabling system innovation.

It is built on matrix solver technology that is production proven in the recently announced Clarity 3D Solver and the Voltus IC Power Integrity Solution.

Optimised for cloud environments, the Celsius Thermal Solver’s massively parallel architecture delivers up to 10X cycle time improvements compared to legacy solutions with high accuracy and unlimited scalability.

It is clearly popular at Robert Bosch.

“In the automotive electronics industry, we depend on precise electro-thermal simulations to develop world-class automotive ASICs and system-in-package components,” said Goeran Jerke, senior project manager EDA Research and Advance Development, Automotive Electronics division at Robert Bosch. “The Cadence Celsius Thermal Solver is tightly integrated with the Virtuoso platform, which makes electro-thermal simulations easily and directly accessible to advanced circuit, layout and package designers. The Celsius Thermal Solver offers fast turnaround times and accurate results. We will be able to explore more design variants and to utilise electro-thermal simulation for new use cases that, until recently, were out of reach.”

“Advanced packaging techniques such as 3D-IC and face-to-face wafer bonding enhance the performance of electronic systems from mobile to high-performance computing applications, but bring new design challenges from the strong coupling between electrical and thermal effects,” said Vicki Mitchell, vice president of systems engineering, Central Engineering Group, Arm. “The addition of the Celsius Thermal Solver to Cadence’s system analysis portfolio allows our mutual customers to deliver next-generation electronic systems because we are now able to support thermal and electrical co-simulation in our design flows.”