future facilities announces next generation of electronic cooling software

(july 13, 2009) - future facilities has announced 6sigmaet, the next generation of electronic cooling software and the first major product for electronics thermal analysis developed in the last decade. “6sigmaet was developed by some of the industry’s leading software designers with many years experience of the application of cfd to electronics cooling. they were given the opportunity to start from scratch without the restrictions involved in working with software that was developed originally a decade ago,” said sherman ikemoto, north american general manager of future facilities. “the result is that 6sigmaet provides capabilities unmatched by previous-generation products such as building the model entirely from intelligent objects which speeds up model creation, enables automatic gridding and simplifies post-processing.

“another key advantage of 6sigmaet is support for the recent trend of redefining the form factor of electronic products by erasing the traditional boundaries between the box, rack and room. with 6sigmaet for example, pcb level design can be done in the context of the data center as the final application. this opens the door to a whole new range of products such as rack-based systems, containerized or custom data centers. ”

6sigmaet dramatically streamlines model creation, gridding, solving and post-processing. an automated process is used to completely convert incoming computer aided design data to intelligent objects such as the chips, capacitors, resistors and other components on a printed circuit board, and complex shaped heatsinks, etc. a heatsink can be snapped onto a chip and a chip can be snapped onto a board, eliminating much of the cumbersome positioning required with primitive-based electronics cooling software. the intelligence contained in every aspect of the model enables automatic meshing such as increasing the grid density in critical areas.

the next generation design of 6sigmaet also overcomes limitations of other electronics cooling software that struggles with complex geometry. 6sigmaet solves the conduction equations required to accurately simulate rotated or angled geometry such as angled dimms. 6sigmaet also provides an updated user interface that greatly reduces learning time and also reduces the time required to perform nearly all basic modeling and reporting tasks.

advanced multigrid solver technology makes the solution process faster and more robust. 6sigmaet bases reporting on the intelligent objects in the model, such as the electronic components, rather than abstract, geometric constructs, greatly reducing the time needed to obtain information necessary to evaluate or characterize the design.

6sigmaet is part of the 6sigmadc software suite, which is the first thermal analysis software that addresses the complete design chain running from printed circuit board design, to electronic systems such as blades and servers, to rack-level systems, to the data center itself. 6sigmaets sister product 6sigmaroom can be used to optimize the performance of the electronic system in the environment where it is intended to be used. this makes it possible to design equipment for next-generation configurations such as modular data centers that contain fan-less servers. next generation configurations are already heavily used in data centers such as google’s data center a and are being eyed for other complex systems with high electronics content such as military aircraft.

future facilities will be unveiling the newly released 6sigmaet at two webcasts to be held on july 7th and 8th at 8 am and 11 am pdt respectively.

please visit www.futurefacilities.com/6sigmaet to register.

about future facilities

future facilities (www.futurefacilities.com) is a leading provider of powerful design, optimization and management software for data centers and electronic equipment. the company’s approach provides the methodology and tools to ensure all capacity, efficiency and reliability criteria are met throughout all phases of the lifecycle from electronic systems design through to facility operation.

for more information about 6sigmaet, visit www.futurefacilities.com/6sigmaet