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John O | September 2016

Breaking Down Thermal Management Challenges in Forced Convection Tablets


by william maltz, electronic cooling solutions, and john parry, mentor graphics

 

accommodating higher performance computing in small form-factors such as a tablet is a thermal management challenge. touch temperature is as important as processor temperature. cooling by natural convection alone isn’t enough for the higher power density of a high-performance tablet, instead forced convection has to be used. this article examines the thermal management challenges of forced convection in a tablet form factor.

 

sony_tablet_s_600

(wikimedia commons)

 

electronic cooling solutions (ecs) first took apart tablets from different vendors, then focused on one particular tablet from a company in cupertino, california. we did a thorough teardown and analysis of that particular device. we even depopulated the board to understand the amount of power that was used by the processor. we used the mentor graphics thermal transient tester, t3ster, to get a better understanding of the thermal stack-up so that we could come up with an effective power number and an understanding of how it contributed to the thermal load in that particular tablet [1].

 

this initial study helped us to understand the limits of what you could do with given volumes in natural convection. it also increased our understanding of the effect of realistic spreading versus ideal spreading. we also learned more about the components that make up a tablet. a fundamental understanding of heat transfer is good, but it needs to be coupled with a good understanding of the actual products for which we’re designing cooling solutions.

 

recently, we have been taking a look at another class of tablets, the business class of tablets that provide more performance than typical natural convection tablets [2]. this time we focused on a product from a company located in redmond, washington, because this tablet is a good example of a product that provides the type of performance that people expect to see in either a notebook or desktop system. we’ve used this product in our work to run cfd models. it can do them as long as the models aren’t too large or too complex, an indication of the processing power that these tablets can deliver…

 

…you certainly save cost on buying one package as opposed to buying three discrete ones and the cost of designing the extra electronics to get them to talk together properly, but there’s a hidden cost down the line — it can only be used if it can be cooled. in the long term, the industry will be able to increase performance by making more effective use of power management. the desire to have even more performance, which means increasing the power, has been present in every single other electronic product that was ever built.

 

interestingly, power management is becoming such an important part of thermal management that we expect to see thermal organizations in the future having a group of software people that are involved in power management working within the thermal team in order to facilitate better communication between all of the people involved in managing the thermal solution. as the products become more integrated, the design teams have to also become more integrated. certain companies that used to specialize in just software are now doing both software and hardware. they need to have good integration between the software and the hardware. steps are being taken to ensure that software and hardware are optimized to work well with each other.

 

read the full article at http://www.deskeng.com/de/breaking-down-the-thermal-management-challenges-in-forced-convection-tablets

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