The EU is now funding a three-year program called the Therminator Project. The project’s goal, as reported in the Therminator Press release:
- To devise innovative thermal models, usable at different levels of abstraction, and to interface/integrate them into existing simulation and design frameworks
- To develop new, thermal-aware design solutions, customized for the different technologies and application domains of interest
- To enhance existing EDA solutions via thermal-aware add-on tools that will enable designers to address temperature issues more effectively using their existing design flows.
Those are pretty ambitious goals but at ATS we welcome them with OPEN arms! ATS, and other thermal design and heat sink companies, recognized that to get to the next level in cooling we really need to attack the problem at the semiconductor. To meet that goal ATS invented mxiPKG, a new BGA package that allowed for the direct connection of a heat sink to an IC using clip technology. That of course would create the right pressure conditions for phase change thermal interface material to do its magic.
Our experience in approaching IC companies was that almost all of them wanted to push the thermal problem into the system vendors hands and be done with it. That wasn’t such a bad approach 20 years ago but as thermal density has increased over time it is clear we need new innovative approaches. The IC Packaging companies didn’t want to be included in the thermal cooling solution either. mxiPKG was our offering in this space and we think whatever the Therminator team does will be very welcome by the thermal design community.
The Therminator program is funded with $11M Euros. Here’s a list of who’s on the Therminator team:
- STMICROELECTRONICS (Italy)
- INFINEON TECHNOLOGIES (Germany)
- NXP SEMICONDUCTORS (The Netherlands and Germany)
- ChipVision Design Systems AG (Germany)
- Gradient Design Automation, Incorporated (United States)
- MunEDA GmbH (Germany)
- SYNOPSYS, Inc. (Armenia and Switzerland)
- BUDAPESTI MUSZAKI ES GAZDASAGTUDOMANYI EGYETEM (Hungary)
- CSEM CENTRE SUISSE D’ELECTRONIQUE ET DE MICROTECHNIQUE SA (Switzerland)
- FRAUNHOFER-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FOERDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG E.V and its IIS Dresden and IISB Erlangen Institutes (Germany)
- IMEC (Belgium)
- CEA LETI Â (France)
- OFFIS e.V. Germany
- POLITECNICO DI TORINO (Italy)
- ALMA MATER STUDIORUM-UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA (Italy)
Read more at the press release: “THERMINATOR Project Warms Efforts to Cool Semiconductor Design Solutions“