Samsung Foundry has approved Ansys’ RedHawk platform for managing power integrity and thermal verification in its line of heterogeneous multi-die packaging technologies. This highlights the pivotal role of power and thermal control in advanced 2.5D and 3D integrated circuit (3D-IC) systems’ reliability and performance.

High-performance computing, smartphones, networking, artificial intelligence, and graphics processing all rely on semiconductor products enhanced by 3D-IC technologies. Samsung provides a variety of 2.5D packaging options, like I-Cube and H-Cube, and 3D vertical stacking through its X-Cube technology. However, the dense integration of multiple chips produces significant challenges in heat dissipation. A single die can consume over 100W of power, needing to be routed via very fine microbump connections.

To combat this, Samsung has joined forces with Ansys to certify the RedHawk-SC Electrothermal for simulating temperature profiles in conjunction with their packaging tech. Samsung also corroborated the predictive precision of RedHawk-SC Electrothermal with Ansys’ Icepak solution, which offers thermal analysis of electronic assemblies, incorporating forced-air cooling and heat sinks.

RedHawk-SC verifies the electromigration (EM) reliability and the voltage drop (IR drop) accuracy of the full power distribution network linking the chiplets and the interposer.