Modeling and metrology in high performance heat sink design

The evolution of the microprocessor has led to a significant increase in the number of I/O pads, the number of high frequency interconnects and power dissipation. The increase in performance has reduced board to board spacing, and as a result, the available space for thermal design in a computer system. High power dissipation and the small form factors have resulted in high density/high performance heat sinks. The current methods of measurement and modeling of heat sinks do not meet the accelerated product development cycles. This paper presents the modeling and metrology for requisite characterization of a heat sink and application of the data in a system computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model.