Tag Archives: heat sinks

Discussion of Thermal Solution for Stratix 10 FPGA

Posted on October 28, 2016 by | Leave a comment

An Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. (ATS) client was planning on upgrading an existing board by adding Altera’s high-powered Stratix 10 FPGAs, with estimates of as many as 90 watts of power being dissipated by two of the components and 40 watts from a third. The client was using ATS heat sinks on the original iteration of the board and wanted ATS to test whether or not the same heat sinks would work with higher power demands.

In the end, the original heat sinks proved to be effective and lowered the case temperature below the required maximum. Through a combination of analytical modeling and CFD simulations, ATS was able to demonstrate that the heat sinks would be able to cool the new, more powerful components.

ATS Field Application Engineer Vineet Barot recently spoke with Marketing Director John O’Day and Marketing Communications Specialist Josh Perry about the process he undertook to meet the requirements of the client and to test the heat sinks under these new conditions.

JP: Thanks again for sitting down with us to talk about the project Vineet. What was the challenge that this client presented to us?
VB: They had a previous-generation PCB on which they were using ATS heat sinks, ATS 1634-C2-R1, and they wanted to know if they switched to the next-gen design with three Altera Stratix 10 FPGAs, two of them being relatively high-powered, could they still use the same heat sinks?

Stratix 10 FPGA

The board that was given to ATS engineers to determine whether the original ATS heat sinks would be effective with new, high-powered Stratix 10 FPGA from Altera. (Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

They don’t even know what the power of the FPGAs is exactly, but they gave us these parameters: 40°C ambient with the junction temperatures to be no more than 100°C. Even though the initial package is capable of going higher, they wanted this limit. That translates to a 90°C case temperature. You have the silicon chip, the actual component with the gates and everything, and you have a package that puts all that together and there’s typically a thermal path that it follows to the lid that has either metal or plastic. So, there’s some amount of temperature lost from the junction to the case.

The resistance is constant so you know for any given power what the max will be. The power that they wanted for FPGAs 1 and 2, which are down at the bottom, was 90 watts, again this is an estimate, and the third one was 40 watts.

JP: How did you get started working towards a solution?
VB: Immediately we tried to identify the worst-case scenario. Overall the board lay-out is pretty well done because you have nice, linear flow. The fans are relatively powerful, lots of good flow going through there. It’s a well-designed board and they wanted to know what we could do with it.

I said, let’s start with the heat sinks that you’re already using, which are the 1634s, and then go from there. Here are the fan specs. They wanted to use the most powerful fan here in this top curve here. This is flow rate versus pressure. The more pressure you have in front of a fan, the slower it can pump out the air and this is the curve that determines that.

Stratix 10 FPGA

Fan operating points on the board, determined by CFD simulations. (Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

This little area here is sometime called the knee of the fan curve. Let’s say we’re in this area, the flow rate and pressure is relatively linear, so if I increase my pressure, if I put my hand in front of the fan, the flow rate goes down. If I have no pressure, I have my maximum flow rate. If I increase my pressure then the flow rate goes down. What happens in this part, the same thing. In the knee, a slight increase in pressure, so from .59 to .63, reduces the flow rate quite a bit.

Stratix 10 FPGA

CFD simulations showed that the fans were operating in the “knee” where it is hard to judge the impact of pressure changes on flow rate and vice versa. (Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

So, for a 0.1 difference in flow rate (in cubic meters per second) it took 0.4 inches of water pressure difference, whereas here for a 0.1 difference in flow rate it only took a .04 increase in pressure. That’s why there’s a circle there. It’s a danger area because if you’re in that range it gets harder to predict what the flow will be because any pressure-change, any dust build-up, any change in estimated open area might change your flow rate.

The 1634 is what they were using previously. It’s a copper heat pipe, straight-fin, mounted with a hardware kit and a backing plate that they have. It’s a custom heat sink that we made for them and actually the next –gen, C2-R1, we also made for them for the previous-gen of their board, they originally wanted us to add heat pipes to this copper heat sink, but I took the latest version and said, let’s see what this one will do. For the third heat sink, I went and did some analytical modeling to see what kind of requirement would be needed and I chose one of our off-the-shelf pushPIN™ heat sinks to work because it was 40 watts.

JO: Is the push pin heat sink down flow from the 1634, so it’s getting preheated air?
VB: Yes. This is a pull system, so the air is going out towards the fans.

Stratix 10 FPGA

CFD simulations done with FloTherm, which uses a recto-linear grid. (Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

This is the CFD modeling that ATS thermal engineer Sridevi Iyengar did in FloTherm. This is a big board. There are a lot of different nodes, a lot of different cells and FloTherm uses recto-linear grids to avoid waviness. You can change the shape of the lines depending on where you need to be. Sri’s also really good at modeling. She was able to turn it around in a day.

Stratix 10 FPGA

Flow vectors at the cut plane, as determined by CFD simulations. (Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

These are the different fans and she pointed out what the different fan operating curves. Within this curve, she’s able to point out where the different fans are and she’s pointing out that fan 5 is operating around the knee. If you look at all the different fans they all operate around this are, which is not the best area to operate around. You want to operate down here so that you have a lot of flow. If you look at the case temperatures, remember the max was 90°C, we’re at 75°C. We’re 15°C below, 15° margin of error. This was a push pin heat sink on this one up here and 1634s on the high-powered FPGAs down here.

Stratix 10 FPGA

JP: Was there more analysis that you did before deciding the original heat sinks were the solution?
VB: I calculated analytical models using the flow and the fan operating curves from CFD because it’s relatively hard to predict what the flow is going to be. Using that flow and doing a thermal analysis using HSM (heat sink modeling tool), we were within five percent. What Sri simulated with FloTherm was if a copper heat sink with the heat pipe was working super well, let’s try copper without the heat pipe and you can see the temperature increased from 74° to 76°C here, still way under the case temperature. Aluminum with the heat pipe was 77°; aluminum without the heat pipe was 81°, so you’re still under.

Basically there were enough margins for error, so you could go to smaller fans because there’s some concern about operating in the knee region, or you can downgrade the heat sink if the customer wanted. We presented this and they were very happy with the results. They weren’t super worried about operating in the knee region because there’s going to be some other things that might shift the curve a little bit and they didn’t want to downgrade the heat sink because of the power being dissipated.

Stratix 10 FPGA

Final case temperatures determined by CFD simulations and backed up by analytical modeling. (Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

JO: What were some of the challenges in this design work that surprised you?
VB: The biggest challenges were translating their board into a board that’s workable for CFD. It’s tricky to simplify it without really removing all of the details. We had to decide what are the details that are important that we need to simulate. The single board computer and power supply, this relatively complex looking piece here with the heat sink, and we simplified that into one dummy heat sink to sort of see if it’s going to get too hot. It all comes with it, so we didn’t have to work on it.

The power supply is even harder, so I didn’t put it in there because I didn’t know what power it would be, didn’t know how hot it would be. I put a dummy component in there to make sure it doesn’t affect the air flow too much but that it does have some effect so you can see the pressure drop from it but thermally it’s not going to affect anything.

JO: It really shows that we know how to cool Stratix FPGAs from Altera, we have clear solutions for that both custom and off-the-shelf and that we understand how to model them in two different ways. We can model them with CFD and analytical modeling. We have pretty much a full complement of capabilities when dealing with this technology.

JP: Are there times when we want to create a TLB (thermal load board) or prototype and test this in a wind tunnel or in our lab?
VB: For the most part, customers will do that part themselves. They have the capability, they have the rack and if it’s a thing where they have the fans built into the rack then they can just test it. On a single individual heat sink basis, it’s not necessary because CFD and analytical modeling are so established. You want two independent solutions to make sure you’re in the right ballpark but it’s not something you’re too concerned that the result will be too far off of the theoretical. For another client, for example, we had to make load boards, but even then they did all the testing.

To learn more about Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. consulting services, visit https://www.qats.com/consulting or contact ATS at 781.769.2800 or ats-hq@qats.com.

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Posted in Analysis, CFD, Chassis, Consulting, Heat Sinks, Modeling, PCB, Simulation, Thermal Analysis

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Technical Discussion of ATS Telecom PCB solution

Posted on October 28, 2016 by | 1 comment

Last year, Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. (ATS) was brought in to assist a customer with finding a thermal solution for a PCB that was included in a data center rack being used in the telecommunications industry. The engineers needed to keep in consideration that the board’s two power-dissipating components were on opposite ends and the airflow across the board could be from either side.

Telecom PCB

The PCB layout that ATS engineer Vineet Barot was asked to design a thermal solution for included two components on opposite ends and airflow that could be coming from either direction. (Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

The original solution had been to use heat sinks embedded with heat pipes, but the client was looking for a more cost-effective and a more reliable solution. The client approached ATS and Field Application Engineer Vineet Barot examined the problem to find the best answer. Using analytical and CFD modeling, he was able to determine that ATS’ patented maxiFLOW™ heat sinks would provide the solution.

Vineet sat down with Marketing Director John O’Day and Marketing Communications Specialist Josh Perry to discuss the challenges that he faced in this project and the importance of using analytical modeling to back up the results of the CFD (computational fluid dynamics).

JP: Thanks for sitting down with us Vineet. How was the project presented to you by the client?
VB: They had a board that was unique – where it would be inserted into a rack, but it could be inserted in either direction. So, we faced a unique challenge because airflow could be from either side of the board. There were two components on either side of the board, so if airflow was coming from one side then component ‘A’ would get hot and from the other side then component ‘B’ would get hot. The other thing was that the customer, who is a very smart thermal engineer, had already set up everything and he was planning on using these heat sinks that had heat pipes embedded in them. The goal was to try and come up with a heat sink that would do the same thing, hopefully without requiring the heat pipes.

JO: Can we talk for a second about the application? You mentioned that airflow was from either side, the board was going to be used in a data center or a telecom node?
VB: It was for a telecom company.

JP: Was there a reason he didn’t want to use a heat pipe?
VB: I think probably cost and reliability. We use heat pipes embedded in the heat sinks too, so it’s not a something we never want to use, but the client wanted to throw that at us and see if we had alternatives.

JP: Can you take us through the board and the challenges that you saw?
VB: As you can see from this slide, there are four main components and two of the hottest ones are on the edge. Airflow can be from right to left or left to right, so which one would be the worst-case scenario?

Telecom PCB

JO: From right to left, I think?
VB: Correct. This one is a straightforward one to figure out because not only is the component smaller but the power is also higher. Even though [air] can go both ways, there’s a worst-case scenario.

This was the customer’s idea – a straight-fin heat sink with a heat pipe and he put one block of heat pipe in there instead of two or three heat pipes that would normally be embedded in there. You can clearly see what the goal was. You have a small component in here, you want to put a large heat sink over the top and you want to spread the heat throughout the base of the heat sink. All the other components are also occupied by straight-fin heat sinks.

JO: Okay, at this point in the analysis, this is the rough estimate of the problem that you face?
VB: This is a straightforward project in terms of problem definition, which can be a big issue sometimes. This time problem definition was clear because the customer had defined the exact heat sink that they wanted to use. It’s not a bad heat sink they just wanted an improvement, cost-wise, reliability-wise.

This is the G600, which is the air going from left to right. The two main components are represented here and we want to make sure that the junction temperatures that the CFD calculated is lower than the maximum junction temperatures allowed, which they were. These heat sinks work. As we always like to do at ATS, we like to have two, independent solutions to verify any problem. That was the CFD result but we also did the analytical modeling to see what these heat sinks are capable of and the percent difference from CFD was less than 10 percent. Twenty percent is the goal typically. If it’s less than 20 percent then you know you’re in the ballpark.

(Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

(Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

JO: Do you use a spreadsheet to do these analytical modeling?
VB: HSM, which is our heat sink modeling tool, and then for determining what velocity you have through the fins, the correct way of doing this is to come up with the flow pattern on your own. You go through all the formulas in the book and determine what the flow will be everywhere or figure out what CFD is giving you for the fan curve and check it with analytical modeling. You can look at pressure drop in there, look at the fan curve and see if you’re in the ballpark. You can also check other things in CFD, for example flow balance. Input the flow data into HSM and it will spit out what the thermal performance is for any given heat sink. HSM calculations are based on its internal formulas.

JO: We effectively have a proprietary internal tool. We’ve made a conscious decision to use it.
VB: To actually use it is unique. Not everybody would use it. A lot of people would skip this step and go straight to CFD. We use CFD too but we want to make sure that it’s on the right path.

JP: What do you see as the benefit of doing both analytical and CFD modeling?
VB: CFD, because it’s so easy to use, can be a tool that will lead you astray if you don’t check it because it’s very easy to use and the software can’t tell you if your results are accurate. If you do any calculation, you use a calculator. The calculator is never going to give you a wrong answer but just because you’re using a calculator doesn’t mean that you’re doing the math right. You want to have a secondary answer to verify that what you did is correct.

JP: What was the solution that you came up with for this particular challenge?
VB: We replaced these heat sinks with the heat pipe with maxiFLOW™, no heat pipe needed. One of the little tricks that I used was to off-set the heat sinks a little bit so that these fins are out here and so the airflow here would be kind of unobstructed. And I set this one a little lower so it would have some fins over here, not much, that would be unobstructed. The G600 configurations worked out with the junction temperatures being below what the maximum requirement was without having to use any heat pipes for the main components. There is also a note showing that one of the ancillary components was also below the max. Analytical modeling of that was within 10-11 percent.

The final PCB layout with maxiFLOW heat sinks covering the hottest components on both ends of the board. (Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

The final PCB layout with maxiFLOW heat sinks covering the hottest components on both ends of the board. (Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

As you noted, this was the worst-case scenario, going from right to left and you can see because it’s the worst-case scenario this tiny little component here that’s 14 watts that’s having all this pre-heated air going into it, it’s junction temperature was exactly at the maximum allowed. That’s not entirely great. We want to build in a little bit of margin but it was below what was needed.

The conclusion here was that maxiFLOW™ was able to provide enough cooling without needing to use the heat pipes and analytical calculation agreed to less than 20 percent. We would need to explore some alternate designs and strategies if we want to reduce the junction temperature even further because that close to the maximum temperature is uncomfortable. The other idea that we had was to switch the remaining heat sinks, the ones in the middle, which are straight fin, also to maxiFLOW™ to reduce pressure drop and to get more flow through this final component.

(Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

(Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

JP: If you have an idea like that, is it something that you broach with the customer?
VB: They really liked the result. If this was a project where the customer said, ‘Yep, we need this,’ then we would have said here’s the initial result and we have an additional strategy. At that point the customer would have said, ‘Yeah this is making us uncomfortable and we need to explore further’ or they would have said, ‘You know what? Fourteen watts is a max and I don’t know if we’ll ever go to 14 watts or the ambient we’re saying is 50°C but we don’t know that it will ever get to 50°C so the fact that you’re at max junction temperature at the worst-case scenario is okay by us.’

JP: Do you always test for the worst-case scenario?
VB: It’s always at the worst-case scenario. It’s always at the max power and maximum ambient temperature.

JP: Was this the first option that we came up with, using maxiFLOW™? Were there other options that we explored?
VB: Pretty much. The way that I approached it was doing the analytical first. You can generate 50 results from analytical modeling in an hour whereas it takes a day and a half for every CFD model – or longer. These numbers here were arrived at with analytical modeling; the height, the width, the top width, were all from analytical modeling, base thickness to measure spreading resistance, all of that was done on HSM and spreadsheets to say this will work.

JP: Do you find that people outside ATS aren’t doing analytical?
VB: No one is doing it, which is really bad because it’s very useful. It gives you a quick idea if it’s acceptable, if this solution is feasible.

To learn more about Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. (ATS) consulting services, visit https://www.qats.com/consulting or contact ATS at 781.769.2800 or ats-hq@qats.com.

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Posted in Analysis, CFD, Consulting, heat sink, PCB, Thermal Analysis

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ATS Heat Sink Hammer Test

Posted on July 15, 2015 by | Leave a comment

Advanced Thermal Solutions brings the wacky and insane experiments of Crazy “Lenny”. Watch as he attempts to smash ATS’s patented maxiGRIP and superGRIP heat sink attachments with an assortment of hammers.

To learn more go to: www.qats.com/Heat-Sink/Attachments

 

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“Heat Sink Selection Made Easy” Free Technical Webinar on June 13

Posted on May 30, 2013 by | Leave a comment

PCB from Tellabs- smaller sige

 

Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. (ATS) will present Heat Sink Selection Made Easy, a free technical webinar for engineers involved in the thermal management of electronic components. The hour-long webinar begins at 2:00 ET on Thursday, June 13.

The heat dissipation needs of todays components are more challenging than ever. Choosing the right heat sink the first time is essential. With so many application requirements and heat sink options, this can be a daunting task, but it is made easier by having an informed approach.

In this webinar, attendees will learn the importance of system airflow and its impact on heat sink design; attachment methods and how to solve thermal and mechanical design challenges; and how to make the right off-the-shelf or custom heat sink choice for your application and budget.

Presenting Heat Sink Selection Made Easy is Dr. Kaveh Azar, president, CEO and founder of Advanced Thermal Solutions. Dr. Azar is an active participant in the electronics thermal community and has served as the organizer, general chair and the keynote speaker at national and international conferences sponsored by ASME, IEEE and AIAA.

How to View the June 13th Webinar:

  • The webinar starts at 2PM ET and will be available for 24 hours, until 2PM ET Friday the 14th.
  • ATS felt that this approach would help engineers in other time zones to be able to watch the webinar.

How to Ask Questions?

  • Today’s webinar speaker, Dr. Kaveh Azar, is happy to take your questions via email.
  • Please send email to ats-hq@qats.com and write in the email’s subject, “Heat Sink Selection Webinar Question”

 

 

 

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Posted in ATS News, heat sink, Heat Sinks, How To, How to Select a Heat Sink, Webinar

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Mouser and Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. (ATS) Sign Global Distribution Agreement

Posted on May 23, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Mouser

 

 

 

May 23, 2013  Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. (ATS) today announced a new global agreement with Mouser Electronics, Inc. to distribute high performance heat sinks and cooling solutions.

The agreement with ATS means Mouser Electronics customers will have access to a wide range of high performance heat sinks available in thousands of shapes and sizes. ATS heat sinks are designed for use in many applications including telecom, datacom, LED, automotive, medical, and aerospace. Their maxiFLOW heat sinks feature a low profile spread fin array that maximizes surface area, yielding the highest thermal performance of any heat sink on the market. ATS maxiFLOW heat sinks are available with thermal tape, push pin or its patented maxiGRIP attachment methodology. ATS maxiGRIP assemblies permit secure attachment of heat sinks to BGAs, flip chips and other hot components on a PCB with steady, even pressure and without any need to drill holes in the board. Both the spring and frame clip in the maxiGRIP assembly can be easily removed, allowing the heat sink to be detached and re-attached without damaging the device, surrounding components or PCB. All ATS maxiGRIP heat sinks are fabricated with high-performance, phase-changing thermal interface material to further maximize performance. Mouser Electronics stocks an extensive line-up of the ATS LED heat sinks, including both the linear style and the round/star shape in a wide variety of sizes; fansinks using maxiGRIP attachment, and a full line of maxiFLOW heat sinks for brick DC/DC converters.

We are very pleased to present to our customers the world-renowned ATS line of heat sinks,” says Keith Privett, Mouser Electronics Vice President of Electromechanical, Power, and Test. Our broad product offering will provide customers with cooling solutions for LEDs, BGAs, power supplies, and specific devices such as flip-chip processors.”

Amongst many air and liquid high capacity cooling solutions, ATS provides the widest range of high performance heat sinks for cooling todays hot-running electronic devices,”says Sharon Koss, VP of Operations and Business Development of ATS. “We look forward to providing thermal solutions to Mouser’s customers around the world.” To view these and other products by ATS, visit http://www.mouser.com/Advanced-Thermal-Solutions/.

With its broad product line and unsurpassed customer service, Mouser caters to design engineers and buyers by delivering whats next in advanced technologies. Mouser offers customers 19 global support locations and stocks the worlds widest selection of the latest semiconductors and electronic components for the newest design projects.

Mouser Electronics website is updated daily and searches more than 10 million products to locate over 3 million orderable part numbers available for easy online purchase. Mouser.com also houses an industry-first interactive catalog, data sheets, supplier-specific reference designs, application notes, technical design information, and engineering tools.

About Mouser Electronics

Mouser Electronics, a subsidiary of TTI, Inc., is part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway family of companies. Mouser is an award-winning, authorized semiconductor and electronic component distributor, focused on the rapid introduction of new products and technologies to electronic design engineers and buyers. Mouser.com features more than 3 million products online from more than 500 manufacturers. Mouser publishes multiple catalogs per year providing designers with up-to-date data on the components now available for the next generation of electronic devices. Mouser ships globally to over 375,000 customers in 170 countries from its 492,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility south of Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit http://www.mouser.com.

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