Concurrent engineering tackles the thermal challenges of high-speed design.

The increasing density of high-speed PCB designs is making it more difficult to simultaneously meet layout, signal integrity and thermal requirements without missing market windows and incurring cost overruns due to design re-spins. In response, Cisco Systems has defined a temperature aware design flow that significantly improves co-design between electrical and mechanical engineers. Designers begin by transferring information from the PCB design software to thermal analysis. A 3D computational fluid dynamics solver predicts airflow and temperature for both sides of the board. Cooling management can thus be considered from the earliest stages of the design process. Placement updates made in thermal analysis can be passed back to PCB design, providing bi-directional connectivity, which allows for concurrent placement and thermal design.

With each successive generation of Cisco products, increases in functionality and speed have increased thermal design challenges. The power consumption of the typical PCB has risen from 600 to 2,000 watts in just the past few years, raising thermal design from a relatively minor issue to a major design and reliability concern. In fact, at 600 watts the heat dissipated from a PCB could not only affect mean time between failure (MTBF) but even prevent the chips from functioning at all. The traditional method of verifying thermal performance of new PCB designs involved a considerable amount of manual transfer of information. The hardware architect typically developed the block diagram floor plan study in Visio. Various spreadsheets files were used to produce the bill of materials and board stack-up. The bill of materials served as the starting point for a spreadsheet used to calculate power consumption. All of this information was calculated in different software and stored in different files. When the information was updated, no record was kept of previous versions nor was the reason for the change recorded. The hardware architect provided this information to the thermal engineer who entered the information into the thermal analysis software and modeled the behavior of the PCB.

The biggest problem with this approach was the amount of time required to perform thermal modeling. It took about five days to generate first-pass results and most of this time was spent manually entering the data and going back to the hardware architect and other electronics engineers to obtain missing information. Essentially, the thermal engineer had to repeat much of the hardware architects' work by transcribing it into a different format for analysis. The need to re-enter information created the potential for error, either through simple data entry mistakes or through misinterpreting the hardware design. In other cases time constraints made it impossible to incorporate all of the details in the design which sometimes led to inaccuracies. Of course, while the initial thermal model was being created, the board design had often changed enough to make the thermal model obsolete by the time it was created. In any event, the PCB design usually changed many times during the design process and usually it was necessary to update the thermal model. These changes typically took three to five days depending on their magnitude.

With product cycles continually being reduced and thermal design becoming more difficult, the inefficiencies of the traditional method were too great to ignore. Cisco thermal engineers believed that the key to improving this process was to automate the flow of information from hardware design to thermal engineering. They learned of a tool with features that seemed to offer the opportunity to improve this process. This tool, called FloPCB, integrates with the PCB design software used by Cisco. It promotes a new design flow in which information is transferred seamlessly between the electronic and mechanical design processes. The tool can be used by both electrical and mechanical engineers to provide a single platform for information that is needed during the thermal design process. This means data only needs to be entered once and is available throughout the design process.

In the new design flow, the hardware architect enters the block diagram into the new tool. The tool makes it possible to specify connectivity between the various blocks that can be accessed by the layout tool. Hardware design engineers can thus derive the first physical layout directly from the block diagram. The bill of materials and power dissipation values for each component are also entered into the tool at this point. The model is created in 3D from the very start, eliminating the need for the thermal engineer to make the conversion from to 3D (Figure 1 and Figure 2). The mechanical engineer can perform a simplified thermal analysis from this very early stage of the design process before the detailed layout has been developed, using board level design to evaluate the new board design in an existing system. A 3D computational fluid dynamics solver predicts airflow and temperature for both sides of the board. Often the design will identify hot spots, as seen in Figure 3 and Figure 4. Identifying these problems at an early stage, before the first-pass board layout is even created, makes it possible to correct cooling problems at virtually no cost. Changes made during this phase to the functional block diagram are immediately reflected in the physical layout and thermal representation. This helps to keep members of the electronic and thermal design teams in sync and enables them to contribute to concept development in real time.

After the PCB layout has been completed, the need exists to create a more detailed thermal model. Designers can simply call up a menu item in design software and move the PCB detailed design information into the thermal design tool (Figure 5). The design information updates the thermal model, making it possible to simulate cooling management with a much higher level of accuracy than can be achieved with the block diagram information alone. The information transferred includes the number of metallic layers, the type of each layer such as signal or power or ground plane, the coverage of copper on the board, and the location and power dissipation of each component. The interface also allows the user to select the appropriate layer used to derive the physical extents of the package. Placement updates made during the thermal design process can be passed back to design software, providing bi-directional connectivity for concurrent placement and thermal design.

Moving to a System-Level Simulation

At the early stages of the design process thermal engineers will typically simulate the performance of the board under simplified conditions such as constant airflow on each side of the board. These conditions work well for basic tasks such as identifying hot spots. As the design process moves forward, thermal engineers want to see how the board will perform thermally under more realistic conditions. To accomplish this, they usually import the thermal model of the board into a system level model. At first, a model of the actual system will probably not be available so engineers generally use a system level model that has been created in the past for a product that is similar to the one being designed. The system level model will generate thermal performance parameters including junction-to-ambient thermal resistance, junction-to-board thermal resistance and junction-to-case thermal resistance as well as temperature profiles within the package under various conditions. Later, after the enclosure and other mechanical components have been designed, a system level model that represents the actual board will be created. The results from the system level analysis can also be exported to the board level simulation for use as boundary conditions. This makes it possible to iterate on the board design at a faster pace than would be possible if the thermal performance of the entire system was computed on each iteration (Figure 6 and Figure 7).

The same model that is used for system level thermal analysis can also be used to address electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) issues far earlier than is normally possible. To date, Cisco has not evaluated this application. The thermal model can be used to perform an EMC simulation of the enclosure design to evaluate its shielding effectiveness and identify which areas are sensitive from an EMC standpoint. Because design often conflicts with EMC design, fixes that are implemented to address thermal concerns often exacerbate or create EMC problems. One example is that thermal design requires large holes to enable adequate airflow while EMC design requires small holes to reduce emissions. A hole will pass considerable electromagnetic fields in and out of the enclosure if one or more of its dimensions is equal to or larger than the wavelength of the field. Being able to address thermal management and EMC issues within a single environment makes it possible for mechanical engineers to get a head start on the difficult design tradeoffs that are frequently required between these two disciplines.

Case History

Cisco's new Laguna Seca switches for optical networking helps service providers deliver broadband services quickly and reliably. To ensure the best balance of performance and reliability, Cisco needed to address tough design and manufacturing challenges posed by the growing complexity and thermal load of the design. The PCB needed to be routed carefully to place heatsinks in the most strategic locations to maximize airflow over board components for the most efficient cooling. Placement and routing were also problematic because meeting performance requirements for the new product required that the PCB be increased from six layers in the previous generation to 20+ layers in the new design. The high cost of manufacturing boards of this complexity level meant that late cycle re-spins promised to be very costly - not only in terms of engineering and prototyping resources, but also in time-to-market delays. The design team used the concurrent electronic/thermal design methods described here to streamline the PCB design process by addressing and solving thermal issues from the beginning of the project when changes are easy and inexpensive to make. Cisco estimated that it saved $50,000 to $250,000 in engineering costs and brought the product to market three to six weeks earlier than would have been possible using traditional design methods.

It appears that the five days that was required in the past to evaluate a prospective board design from a thermal standpoint can be reduced to only two and a half days or less. The tool is relatively new so it's not possible to state with certainty that these savings can be achieved on a consistent basis. The accuracy of the information used for thermal simulation has also been improved, increasing the accuracy of the simulation results. The savings are actually greater than this comparison reflects because shortening the time required to perform a thermal evaluation allows engineers to react faster and avoid putting additional time and money into a design with thermal problems. The greatest benefit of all is the additional revenues that can be generated by bringing the product to market sooner. PCD&M

Herman Chu is technical leader at Cisco Systems. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Akhil Docca is an thermal applications engineer at Flomerics. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Sherman Ikemoto is business development manager at Flomerics Inc. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..