Date: 13/12/2011

Single solution for both thermal characterization and simulation of electronic devices

Mentor Graphics has announced combined technology for thermal characterization and simulation with T3Ster hardware test products and its FloTHERM software.

Mentor says designers working on subsystems and systems using information for LED, semiconductor, and package components use complex thermal analysis software to help accelerate the design of their products but the analysis, typically based on vendor datasheets, often provides insufficient results. Clear, accessible, and reliable data relating to thermal characteristics upstream and downstream is critical. Methods to achieve this have traditionally been awkward, manual and therefore error-prone - until now with Mentor Graphics T3Ster thermal characterization and interface to the FloTHERM thermal simulation software product, claims Mentor.

"As LEDs become more powerful, more attention should be paid to thermal management, which is essential to ensure stable LED performance and long lifetime. This is why OSRAM is devoting considerable attention to thermal design. T3Ster's accuracy and repeatability enable us to verify our thermal designs and confirm the stability and reliability of our products," stated Dr. Thomas Zahner, quality manager, Osram Opto Semiconductors. "By testing in bulk we get increased statistical confidence in the measurement results. The structure functions built into the T3Ster software are extremely powerful for identifying different thermal attach issues during our extensive reliability testing." (from "When Designing with Power LEDs, Consider Their Real Time Thermal Resistance," by Andras Poppas, Mentor Graphics, Nov/Dec 2009 LED Professional Review.)

"To design our lighting systems, we needed reliable data regarding LED characteristics and simulation tools which deliver results quickly. We found that Mentor's T3Ster and FloTHERM products were the best such tools available to us and we could use them in our project to verify our PearLight street lighting luminaires for proper heat management. Accuracy and speed in achieving the results was critical for our business," said András Szalai, CFO, HungaroLux.

The Mentor Graphics T3Ster advanced thermal characterization tester for semiconductor packages is the only commercially available product to fully implement the JEDEC JESD51-14 new measurement methodology standard for the junction-to-case thermal resistance of power semiconductor devices.

"Mentor's best-in-class thermal simulation and measurement of semiconductor packages and LEDs provide tremendous advantages for customers faced with thermal challenges," said Erich Buergel, general manager of Mentor Graphics Mechanical Analysis Division. "The ease in creating accurate thermal models based on reliable thermal measurements helps users quickly to identify design problems and to create design alternatives which improve product quality, reliability, and increased profitability."