Power pre-characterized meshing algorithm for finite element thermal analysis of integrated circuits

摘要

In this paper we present an adaptive meshing technique suitable for steady state finite element (FE) based thermal analysis of integrated circuits (ICs). The algorithm presented is a non iterative one where the technology used is first pre-characterized. The characterization results are then used for scanning the layout to detect high power regions then fine meshing them. Finally, the analysis is done only once. This makes it faster than conventional iterative adaptive meshing methods. The algorithm results showed comparable accuracy and better performance when compared to the flux based (iterative) and the power aware (non iterative) algorithms.