A Comparative Study of Placement of Processor on Silicon and Thermal Analysis

Today when we have stepped into the second decade of this century, the integrated circuits are getting more and more complex with multicore processors. With technology scaling, more devices are being integrated into a small area. As a result, heat dissipation in integrated circuits (ICs) has increased. The processor is one of the highest heat generating components in an IC. The temperature generated in an integrated circuit varies with factors like number of processors, processor modes, their dimensions and arrangement on Silicon. In this paper we are presenting two simulation results. First one was obtained by analyzing how the area occupied by processor affects the temperature distribution. This study is extremely important as the area occupied by processors scales down with technology. The second study was to find out how the processor location and modes can affect temperature distribution in multicore processors. The processors at 2.4GHz frequency were analyzed in both active and idle modes. The highest and lowest temperatures and the location of hotspot in each case were analyzed.