System Analysis Knowledge Bytes: Cadence Celsius Thermal Solver: A Complete Thermal Solution with FEA and CFD

The System Analysis Knowledge Bytes blog series explores the capabilities and potential of the System Analysis tools offered by Cadence®. In addition to providing insight into the useful features and enhancements in this area, this series aims to broadcast the views of different bloggers and experts, who share their knowledge and experience on all things related to System Analysis.

As modern electronic systems are evolving towards miniaturization, the contribution of electronic components is increasing day by day in all industries and as the demand is increasing, billions of transistors are added to ICs. This results in the power and thermal issues getting more and more complex. These problems are widespread and can occur anywhere in the system. Although thermal design considerations are often considered a mechanical engineer’s job, the fundamental problem lies in the electrical system. Let’s see how. 

Electrical systems have multiple circuits. Each circuit consumes power, which can lead to heat generation. If the heat produced at a specific location due to multiple circuits goes beyond a limit, it can affect the functioning of the system and even damage the PCB and components. In such cases, what if we have a way to find the temperature hot spots or temperature distribution across the system before the PCB production?

In this blog, we are going to see how Cadence^® Celsius Thermal Solver helps electrical engineers plan thermal-aware designs and avoid system failures in real-time. The Celsius Thermal Solver is a complete Electrical-Thermal Co-Simulation package for the full hierarchy—from Die Level, IC Package, Board to System Physical enclosures of electronic systems. It provides analysis and design insights that empower electrical design teams to detect and mitigate thermal issues early and avoid costly re-spins by reducing electronic system development iterations

What Makes Celsius Thermal Solver Stand Out from the Crowd  

Celsius Thermal Solver offers full system scalability with 3D analysis accuracy and innovative, multi-physics technology that addresses the challenge of multiple power profiles and increased heat dissipation. This is due to a unique combination of finite element analysis (FEA) for solid structures with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for fluids that enables a complete system analysis in a single tool. The combination of FEA and CFD field solvers provides a detailed analysis of the entire system, as well as a detailed thermal model analysis of chip, package, and board designs while leveraging cloud computing to maximize the throughput.

The physical phenomenon of heat flux due to temperature differences and its interaction with the fluid flow is known as Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT). Simply put, heat transfer analysis looks at conduction, convection, and radiation to determine how energy is transferred. Applying heat transfer simulations and modeling in CFD models means opening an entire world of heat management possibilities.

Meshing geometry is the first and, potentially, most impactful stage of CFD workflow. Meshing impacts accuracy, convergence, and simulation process efficiency. The robust geometry preparation capabilities of Celsius shorten the time needed to create a high-quality mesh. Using Celsius engineering teams can combine electrical and thermal analysis and simulate the flow of both electricity and heat for a more accurate system-level thermal simulation compared to legacy tools.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

In addition, Celsius Thermal Solver performs both static (steady-state) and dynamic (transient) electrical-thermal co-simulations based on the actual flow of electrical power in advanced 3D and warpage structures, providing visibility into the real-world system behavior.

By empowering electronics engineers teams to analyze thermal issues at the electronic design level itself, thus sharing ownership of thermal analysis, Celsius Thermal Solver reduces design re-spins and enables new analysis and design insights not possible with legacy solutions. In addition, Celsius Thermal Solver accurately simulates large systems with detailed granularity for any object of interest. It is the first solution capable of modeling structures as small as the IC and its power distribution together with structures as large as the chassis.

Accurate simulation of thermal-induced stress and strain in solids allows designers to pinpoint the problem areas and avoid costly product reliability issues Celsius is virtually unlimited and equipped with a massively parallel computational solver that delivers up to 10X faster performance from the ground up. This is done by taking advantage of the multi-core compute resources by parallelizing the mathematical tasks required to solve for 3D structures, which reduces the turnaround time from weeks to a day or less for complex structures .This industry-leading parallelization technology ensures that both meshing and physical structures can be partitioned and parallelized across as many computers, computer configurations, and cores as are available.

Integration with different tools at any design level is another differentiator of Celsius. This is because Celsius is integrated with Cadence chip, package, and PCB design platforms, including Allegro^® PCB Designer, AWR Design Environment^®, the Innovus^TM Implementation System, the Virtuoso^® System Design Platform, and the Voltus^TM IC. This provides Power Integrity Solution in a single environment, sharing data, and enabling automation between workflows and user interfaces, thus regenerating your IC to PCB design workflows.

            That’s why Celsius is a complete thermal solution with accuracy, speed, and unlimited capacity!

Related Resources 

Stay with us as we continue to explore what’s new in the world of Cadence Sigrity and Systems Analysis. For information about the most recent enhancements, check the Sigrity and Systems Analysis 2022.1 What's New.

Sivaprakasam Somasundaram

For more information on Cadence Sigrity and Systems Analysis products and services, visit www.cadence.com.

Contact Us

For any questions, feedback, or new content development ideas, write to system_analysis_blogs@cadence.com.