Transient thermal management in electronic packaging using dynamic control of power dissipation and heat transfer

Chip design based on steady state power dissipation coupled with maximum steady state thermal management severely limits the performance of compact, convectively cooled portable systems. We propose transient thermal management concepts to improve portable system performance by exploiting time varying workloads. Chip power dissipation, cooling, and processing power are all controlled in an interactive fashion. Reliability, dynamic power scheduling and dynamic heat transfer control are discussed. Queueing simulation of general workloads and interactive application of workload to a model system indicates that the proposed transient thermal management concepts offer significant performance advantage over steady state designs.