Thermal Simulator for Advanced Packaging and Chiplet-Based Systems

Heterogeneous chiplet-based integration is expected to provide performance scalability and cost-effectiveness for the next generation of microelectronic systems. Practical deployment of chiplet-based platforms, however, requires developing novel electronic design automation (EDA) tools that support advanced packaging approaches. Compact thermal simulators are essential EDA tools for the evaluation of design alternatives at the early stages of the design. Developing efficient compact thermal simulators for advanced heterogeneous integration platforms is a key requirement, as the available tools provide limited support for heterogeneity and advanced packaging technologies. ARTSim 2.0, a robust thermal simulator for heterogeneous integration platforms, is presented in this work. ARTSim 2.0 includes three main features, i.e., robust hybrid meshing, modeling of heterogeneous layers, and an efficient solver that utilizes parallel processing. Several case studies on advanced chiplet-based platforms, including TSV-based 3-D integrated circuits (ICs), Intel EMIB, and TSMC InFO_PoP, are conducted to demonstrate the novel capabilities of ARTSim 2.0. The performance of ARTSim 2.0 for both transient and steady-state conditions is compared to results obtained from state-of-the-art finite element method (FEM) tools. Simulation results confirm that the temperature accuracy of the thermal maps that are generated by ARTSim 2.0 is within a maximum error of 1.17% while exhibiting a reduction in runtime of at least two orders of magnitude, as compared to the FEM tools.