A quasi-SPICE electro-thermal simulator

Integrated circuits exhibit coupled electro-thermal phenomena. The circuit elements dissipate heat, which propagates in the chip, rising the temperature of all circuit elements. Since the operation of the latter is temperature dependent, their dissipation will also change. This change results in the variation of the element voltages and currents, causing further changes in the dissipation, etc. Therefore we are facing a pair of couplings: an electronic → thermal one and a thermal → electronic one, meaning that all integrated circuits constitute essentially a mutually coupled electronic and thermal system. In this paper a detailed discussion of the electrothermal phenomena is presented regarding the practical implementation. The final implementation is a SPICE compatible electro-thermal solver (qSPICE), which implements some of the major industry standard models with extended coupled thermal capabilities. The accuracy of qSPICE is demonstrated on multiple examples.