Efficient transient thermal simulation of 3D ICs with liquid-cooling and through silicon vias

Three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs) with advanced cooling systems are emerging as a viable solution for many-core platforms. These architectures generate a high and rapidly changing thermal flux. Their design requires accurate transient thermal models. Several models have been proposed, either with limited capabilities, or poor simulation performance. This work introduces an efficient algorithm based on the Finite Difference Method to compute the transient temperature in liquid-cooled 3D ICs. Our experiments show a 5x speedup versus state-of-the-art models, while maintaining the same level of accuracy, and demonstrate the effect of large through silicon vias arrays on thermal dissipation.