Abstract
The increasing power density in modern high-performance multiprocessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) is fueling a revolution in thermal management. On the one hand, thermal phenomena are becoming a critical concern, making accurate and efficient simulation a necessity. On the other hand, a variety of physically heterogeneous solutions is coming into play: liquid, evaporative, thermoelectric cooling, and more. A new generation of simulators, with unprecedented flexibility, is thus required. In this article, we present 3D-ICE 3.0, the first thermal simulator to allow for accurate nonlinear descriptions of complex and physically heterogeneous heat dissipation systems, while preserving the efficiency of latest compact modeling frameworks at the silicon die level. 3D-ICE 3.0 allows designers to extend the thermal simulator with new heat sink models while simplifying the time-consuming step of model validation. The support for nonlinear dynamic models is included, for instance, to accurately represent variable coolant flows. Our results present validated models of a commercial water heat sink and an air heat sink plus fan that achieve an average error below 1 °C and simulate, respectively, up to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$12\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> faster than the real physical phenomena.
Highlights
The race towards increasing performance is constantly pushing the power density of integrated circuits
In this work we introduce 3D-ICE 3.0, a thermal simulator designed to address the aforementioned challenges. 3D-ICE 3.0 builds upon the 3D-ICE [12] thermal simulator, by extending the differential equation model of the silicon die with a co-simulation interface to connect it with arbitrary heat sink models
In the chosen co-simulation infrastructure, the 3D-ICE core simulates the parts of the system that require only configuration and can be modeled using linear differential equations (i.e., multi-processor system-on-chip (MPSoC) and heat spreader), while the plugin is dedicated to the parts that are nonlinear and need replacing to achieve the required level of flexibility
Summary
The race towards increasing performance is constantly pushing the power density of integrated circuits. The proposed co-simulation interface follows the Functional Mockup Interface (FMI) industry standard [16], allowing to integrate a vast set of languages and tools, including equationbased ones like Modelica and Simscape [17] With such languages it is possible to create a heat sink model directly in terms of its equations, as opposed to writing the code to solve them, which is much faster for the MPSoC designer. To show the potential of 3D-ICE 3.0, we present new validated models for a commercial air heat sink with variable fan speed, and a commercial water cooled one with variable water flow rate These models can be used to perform architectural exploration as well as to design new thermal policies for different MPSoC architectures.
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