darvin edwards is an engineering fellow at ti. he recently wrote a terrific editorial for electronic design that we whole heartedly agree with. his basic point is that a combination of smart, thought through thermal design along with "smart" ic's that understand what is happening thermally, are critical for today's systems to run optimally and safely. his editorial covers a number of points that are worth hearing and learning from. afterall, mr. edwards didn't become a ti fellow and co-author 45 papers, articles, and book chapters on a number of topics including thermal challenges for nothing! among the important thoughts in his article:
- the largest source of error in a system thermal analysis is usually the estimate of the power that will be dissipated by the system
- improving airflow may not fix a system that doesn’t have sufficient heatsinking at even the most aggressive airflow velocities [editor: does this still happen in rushed designs? yes it does!]
- two trends are resolving issues related to overheating: self-sensing electronics that throttle device performance and power consumption when they begin to overheat and expertise in the art of system design to optimize thermal performance.
darvin has alot more to say, and we encourage our readers to hear him out, see his article at electronic design here, "enhance thermal performance through design and optimization".
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