Analysis of integrated circuits thermal dynamics with point heating time

The article presents an analysis of thermal dynamics in integrated circuits using a new method. The introduced variable that defines the dynamic state of an IC is point heating time (PHT). The authors examine the dynamic behaviour of the integrated circuit caused by the thermal activity of one and many functional modules on the multi-core chip. Various substrate materials were analysed and the PHT value was compared to the mean temperature of the integrated circuit and its time constant. The PHT value is also analysed as a variable dependent on the distance from the heat centre of the heating module. The analytical equation, which is a result of the analysis, can describe the PHT value versus distance for the whole chip surface. Further analysis helps verify the hypothesis using a massive multi-core integrated circuit. The result can be used to increase the thermal efficiency of multi-core integrated circuits by thermal-aware flow modification of the scheduling algorithm.