Thermal characterisation of vertical multichip modules MCM-V

This paper describes the thermal characterisation of a vertical multichip module (MCM-V) technology. The MCM-V technology encloses a stack of ICs in a three dimensional cube of plastic moulding compound with the inter-chip electrical connections made on the outside faces of the cube. Steady state and transient thermal results are presented. Thermal measurements were carried out on modules containing eight specially designed package evaluation test chips. Simulation results are shown for two applications manufactured in the MCM-V technology; a 2 W 16 chip 256 MBit DRAM module and a 3 W 9 chip image processing system.