SETIPIC: electrothermal simulator for power integrated circuits in EDGE environment

The authors present SETIPIC, a software to simulate the electrothermal interactions in the first design steps of power integrated circuits. To give a well-consistent interface to the designer, SETIPIC has been integrated in the EDGE CAD system. The software aspect of this integration is explained. SETIPIC works around SPICE3 (electric simulation) and PICMOST (thermal simulation). This thermal simulator which calculates the thermal distribution on the layout surface of a chip taken in its environment is also described. Finally, an infrared experimental set up is proposed to validate SETIPIC and some thermal and electrothermal simulation results are given