Cadence Launches Celsius Thermal Solver, Delivering the Industry’s First Complete Electrical-Thermal Co-Simulation for System Analysis

A temperature profile of 3D structures inside a package with metal interconnects,
as generated by the Cadence Celsius Thermal Solver

IC and electronic systems companies, particularly those incorporating 3D-IC packaging, face tremendous thermal challenges that can cause late-stage design modifications and iterations and derail project schedules. As the electronics industry moves toward smaller, faster, smarter and more complex products with greater power density, time-consuming thermal transient analysis techniques must be deployed together with traditional steady-state analysis to address multiple power profiles and increased heat dissipation. Further complicating the process, traditional simulators require the electronics and enclosures being modeled to be substantially simplified, resulting in reduced accuracy.

The Celsius Thermal Solver utilizes innovative multi-physics technology to address these challenges. By combining finite element analysis (FEA) for solid structures with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for fluids, the Celsius Thermal Solver enables complete system analysis in a single tool. When using the Celsius Thermal Solver in conjunction with the Clarity 3D Solver, Voltus™ IC Power Integrity and Sigrity™ technology for PCB and IC packaging, engineering teams can combine electrical and thermal analysis and simulate the flow of both electricity and heat for a more accurate system-level thermal simulation than legacy tools. In addition, the Celsius Thermal Solver performs both static (steady-state) and dynamic (transient) electrical-thermal co-simulations based on the actual flow of electrical power in advanced 3D structures, providing visibility into real-world system behavior.

By empowering electronics design teams to analyze thermal issues early and share ownership of thermal analysis, the Celsius Thermal Solver reduces design re-spins and enables new analysis and design insights not possible with legacy solutions. In addition, the Celsius Thermal Solver accurately simulates large systems with detailed granularity for any object of interest and is the first solution capable of modeling structures as small as the IC and its power distribution together with structures as large as the chassis.

The Celsius Thermal Solver supports Cadence’s Intelligent System Design™ strategy, enabling system innovation. It is built on matrix solver technology that is production proven in the recently announced Clarity 3D Solver and the Voltus IC Power Integrity Solution. Optimized for cloud environments, the Celsius Thermal Solver’s massively parallel architecture delivers up to 10X cycle time improvements compared to legacy solutions with high accuracy and unlimited scalability.

“As part of our Intelligent System Design strategy, Cadence is applying our extensive computational software expertise to new system innovations that address critical customer pain points,” said Tom Beckley, senior vice president and general manager, Custom IC & PCB Group at Cadence. “Following the highly successful launch of our Clarity 3D Solver earlier this year, the Celsius Thermal Solver helps our customers overcome the crucial challenge of system design and analysis of thermal effects and furthers Cadence’s expansion into new system domains.”

Endorsements

“In the automotive electronics industry, we depend on precise electro-thermal simulations to develop world-class automotive ASICs and system-in-package components,” said Goeran Jerke, senior project manager EDA Research and Advance Development, Automotive Electronics division at Robert Bosch GmbH. “The Cadence Celsius Thermal Solver is tightly integrated with the Virtuoso platform, which makes electro-thermal simulations easily and directly accessible to advanced circuit, layout and package designers. The Celsius Thermal Solver offers fast turnaround times and accurate results. We will be able to explore more design variants and to utilize electro-thermal simulation for new use cases that, until recently, were out of reach.”

“Advanced packaging techniques such as 3D-IC and face-to-face wafer bonding enhance the performance of electronic systems from mobile to high-performance computing applications, but bring new design challenges from the strong coupling between electrical and thermal effects,” said Vicki Mitchell, vice president of systems engineering, Central Engineering Group, Arm. “The addition of the Celsius Thermal Solver to Cadence’s system analysis portfolio allows our mutual customers to deliver next-generation electronic systems because we are now able to support thermal and electrical co-simulation in our design flows.”

Availability

The Celsius Thermal Solver is currently being used in production by select customers and is in general availability now.