Compact thermal modeling for temperature-aware design

Thermal design in sub-100nm technologies is one of the major challenges to the CAD community. In this paper, we first introduce the idea of temperature-aware design. We then propose a compact thermal model which can be integrated with modern CAD tools to achieve a temperature-aware design methodology. Finally, we use the compact thermal model in a case study of microprocessor design to show the importance of using temperature as a guideline for the design. Results from our thermal model show that a temperature-aware design approach can provide more accurate estimations, and therefore better decisions and faster design convergence. Categories and Subject Descriptors: B.7.2 [Hardware]: Design Aids J.6 [Computer-Aided Engineering]: Computer-Aided Design. General Terms: Design, Algorithms.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: DAC
• Authors: Wei Huang, Mircea R. Stan, Kevin Skadron, Karthik Sankaranarayanan, Shougata Ghosh, Sivakumar Velusamy
• Keywords: Compact Thermal Model, DAC 2004, Design Automation, Faster Design Convergence, Thermal Design