Technical Field
This invention relates to a thermal simulation device and method and, in particular, to a thermal simulation device and method for integrated circuits.
Related Art
In integrated circuit (IC) design, high power density easily causes a thermal problem. If temperature reasons are neglected in IC design, the reliability of a chip may be reduced a lot, which not only increases power consumption of the chip but also decreases system performance. Therefore, if a thermal analysis can be performed by a thermal simulator during the early period of IC design regarding the influence of the temperature reasons upon the chip, the reliability of the chip can be improved so as to reduce the power consumption and enhance the system performance.
In the conventional art, a thermal simulator mostly uses the following two analysis modes to perform the thermal analysis for the integrated circuit. One is called the thermal analysis of the functional block mode, which performs the thermal analysis in the light of the function block in the integrated circuit. As shown in FIG. 1A, the layout C1 of the integrated circuit is divided into five function blocks C11˜C15, and each function block can correspond to a function module. Then, the thermal analysis is performed for the integrated circuit in the unit of a function block, so as to obtain the heat point of each block (every block has a heat point, and the heat point is assumed the center point of the block). However, because the thermal analysis of the function block is performed in the unit of a function block, the accuracy and the precision of the thermal analysis of the chip are not good.
The other kind is called the thermal analysis of the structured mesh mode. As shown in FIG. 1B, the layout C1 of the integrated circuit is divided into regularly arranged meshes C16 (each mesh C16 can correspond, for example, to an element, such as a logic gate), and the thermal analysis is performed for the integrated circuit in the unit of a mesh to obtain the heat point of every mesh C16 (the center point of each mesh is assumed the heat point of the mesh). Although the thermal analysis according to the regular meshes can give the temperature analysis really good accuracy and precision, the regular mesh analysis mode needs the matrix operation to obtain the temperature of every mesh. Accordingly, as the number of the meshes increases, the size of the operational matrix increases with a square multiple and the time for the analysis and operation also increases a lot.
Therefore, it is needed to provide a thermal simulation device and method for integrated circuits, whereby the complexity of the computation of the thermal analysis can be reduced with better accuracy and precision of the thermal analysis.