Automatic Generation and Validation of Compact Network Models for a Fine Pitch BGA Package

A methodology for automatically generating compact thermal network models of increasing complexity, for use in numerical simulations of general semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) packages is presented. The method is based on the multi-grid agglomeration of the underlying mesh used in the finite volume discretization of the energy conservation equation of the package. The method is applied to a 196-pin fine pitch ball grid array (FBGA) package. Various network topologies and the corresponding network conductances were automatically extracted for this package. These networks were then used in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for a range of boundary conditions corresponding to single-phase natural and forced convective cooling. Results show good agreement with the detailed package simulations.