Reliability Challenges in Design and Operation of High Heat Powered Processors

Advances in processor design have been made possible in part by increases in the packaging density of electronics. At the same time, combination of increased power dissipation and packaging density has led to substantial growth in the chip and system heat fluxes and amplified complexity in electrical signal integrity and mechanical stack-up design in the recent years, particularly, in the high-end computers. With the trend towards miniaturization, heat removal, along with increased reliability requirements, has become a major bottleneck in product development, especially, in low profile systems, telecom servers and blades. Cooling of high heat flux components may require consideration of innovative open-loop, as well as plausible closed-loop, cooling designs for data centers. This paper addresses reliability aspects of thermal, electrical, mechanical, and interconnect design and long-life operation of high-end air-cooling, as well as feasible active open and closed-loop cooling technologies of high heat flux processors.