Thermal placement on PCB of components including 3D ICs

Abstract

In this letter, we propose a method for optimizing the thermal placement of heat and non-heat generating electronic components on a printed circuit board (PCB). Use a genetic algorithm to optimize the maximum temperature of the PCB and the total wire length between components. In the case that chips stacked in 3D ICs are reconfigurable, each chip construction of 3D ICs is also changed simultaneously. The temperature of each component is obtained by circuit simulation using a simple thermal circuit model. The experimental results demonstrate that the placement of components can be optimized well for lowering the maximum temperature with shorter wire lengths.