DESIGN OPTIMIZATION OF MICROPROCESSOR HEATSINK AND ITS IMPACT ON PROCESSOR PERFORMANCE

Abstract

The number of integrated circuits (IC's) in a package is increasing multifold, putting stress on packaging material, thermal and structural stresses. With the miniaturization of electronic gadgets, the packaging engineers are forced to design the chips/ packages that can overcome the above problem in addition to Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI). The authors aim to develop a system to ensure optimum use of space with increase in speed. Although it is necessary to consider several factors, the authors propose to address the impact of thermal issues in an electronic package. Operating the system above the rated temperature range can degrade system performance, cause logical errors or cause component and/or system damage. Hence, an optimum heatsink design would mitigate the above problem. Thus, it was found that by optimizing the heatsink fins, not only there was a remarkable reduction in junction temperature, but also an increase in speed of processes. It is therefore seen that the design of heatsink is of paramount importance. However, in addition to effective thermal dissipation, it must also be of a compact size. A genetic algorithm is performed for optimization of heatsink geometry. The impact of running the CPU stability tests on a processor with varying heatsink geometry (within the boundaries specified in the optimization program) was performed and the temperature distribution results are presented. It was observed that the temperature distribution was within the maximum operating temperature of the package.