{"id":592,"date":"2009-10-12T09:07:28","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T16:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/robinbornoff\/?p=592"},"modified":"2026-03-27T08:55:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T12:55:17","slug":"so-you-want-to-predict-component-temperatures-do-you-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/2009\/10\/12\/so-you-want-to-predict-component-temperatures-do-you-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"So, you want to predict component temperatures do you? Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lumped block package representation makes the best use of limited available data to simulate for an &#8216;indication&#8217; of case temperature. Some indication is better than none but I wouldn&#8217;t bet on it, really, I wouldn&#8217;t. Accurate case and junction temperature prediction can only be realised with either a fully 3D detailed representation or an abstracted CTM (compact thermal model) representation. Here we&#8217;ll focus on the latter&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Being a greasy Mechanical Engineer I still don&#8217;t fully understand the difference between SPICE and IBIS models. One thing I think I understand though is that they are both models that behave in the right way without being defined as explicitly as they exist in reality. They are abstractions. From a thermal perspective the most common form of abstraction of a component is based on the electro-thermal analogy of thermal resistors (and more commonly nowadays, capacitors). A thermal IBIS model if you will.<\/p>\n<p>A thermal resistance has the units of DegC\/Watt. The penalty paid (DegC temperature rise) for the power being dissipated. In other words:<\/p>\n<p>T_component &#8211; T_ambient \/ Power = Resistance<\/p>\n<p>T_component = (Resistance x Power) + T_ambient<\/p>\n<p>if you know the resistance, the power being dissipated and the ambient temperature around the component then you can back out a component temperature.\u00a0 That&#8217;s assuming of course a single heat flow path from the source (die) to the ambient that can be characterised as a single resistance. Oh, if only life were that simple.<\/p>\n<p>There are a number of resistance &#8216;topologies&#8217; that have been proposed to best represent the many and varied heat flow paths in packages. One thing to be aware of, the difference in electrical resistivity between a conductor and a typical dielectric is what, ~10 orders of magnitude, thus keeping the electrical flow exclusively in the conductor. From a thermal perspective the difference in thermal resistance between all objects found within a typical IC package is only about 4 orders of magnitude. Heat therefore tends to spread around in 3D, irrespective of the electrical intention of the various parts that make up a package, thus making it let&#8217;s just say &#8216;difficult&#8217; to collapse those heat flow paths down to interconnected 1D resistors. And you thought electrical engineering was challenging.<\/p>\n<p>There are three main types of CTM; 1 resistor, 2 resistor and DELPHI. I&#8217;ll introduce in each in turn next&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>12th October 2009, Ross-on-Wye<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lumped block package representation makes the best use of limited available data to simulate for an &#8216;indication&#8217; of case temperature&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71715,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,49,65,80,115,184,206,207],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-component","tag-ctm","tag-electronics-cooling","tag-flotherm","tag-ibis","tag-spice","tag-thermal-resistance","tag-thermal-resistor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71715"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6314,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions\/6314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}