An early system-level thermal analysis methodology for advanced electronic subsystems

Growing markets like automotive, IoT and networking are pushing the reliability requirements of electronic components present in them to extreme levels. Such applications require specialized ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) to process of huge amounts of data in extreme environments over extended periods of time, or for almost continuous use over shorter periods. While predicting the functional behavior of such complex System on Chip (SoC) and systems requires significant verification effort with help of extensive simulations and emulations, power-thermal reliability is another key area of focus for such applications. In this paper, we describe a methodology where we can leverage the functional simulation and emulation data to perform fast power profiling and describe how this can further be used to perform transient thermal analysis in complex SoCs. This data can then be used for guiding the physical design of the SoC, optimizing the software stack and estimate the cooling requirements for the entire system.