Generalized thermal analysis of hotspots on a high power density microprocessor chip

Hotspots on GHz microprocessor chips pose threats to system performance and reliability. We have found that for a given package configuration and chip geometry there exist a set of universal curves that describe the steady state and time dependent thermal behavior of a chip hotspot of any (rectangular) shape and any (uniform) power density. We demonstrate a set of such curves for a representative case. The methodology described is very general in nature. For most practical situations it can be used to produce sets of curves and offers a general solution for the thermal behavior of constant power density hotspots of arbitrary rectangular shape, which can be calculated for any given package configuration. This can be used by chip designers, chip architects, and package designers to evaluate thermal tradeoffs in both time and space to achieve optimized designs in terms of thermal performance.