A new tool development for the thermal design and quick performance evaluation of FBGA devices

Due to rising thermal concerns from increasing power densities and industry demands for shorter development cycle times, we have developed quick solutions to assess the thermal performance of the FBGA package, one of the most widespread package options. We have designed a user friendly tool that provides a quick estimation of the junction to ambient thermal resistance of the FBGA package under JEDEC test conditions (JESD 51-2 and JESD 51-6). Results can be obtained within minutes by a click of a button after the simple entry of key package and environmental data. The tool significantly reduces the time for thermal evaluation; from hours or days needed to conduct full Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations, to minutes by using the tool. It can also be used for upfront thermal design as it is able to assess the thermal impact due to changes in various package factors such as package size, die size, presence of solder balls under the die area, number and thickness of substrate metallized layers, total substrate thickness and number of thermal vias under the die area. The tool is also able to assess the impact due to changes in wind speed up to 1m/s and test board including both the 1S0P and 2S2P JEDEC PCB. With these features, the tool can be used to quickly estimate if the package specifications meet the desired thermal requirement, and if it fails to meet the requirement, rapidly identify potential package thermal design options.