flomerics today announces the acquisition of micred - a hungarian based company formed in 1997 as a
spin-off from budapest university of technology and economics (bute). micred’s
main product is the “t3ster” (pronounced “trister”), which provides fast,
repeatable and accurate thermal characterization of ic devices, including
stacked-die and system-in-package devices. organizations already using the
t3ster include ibm, infineon, intel, philips and st microelectronics – all of
which are also users of the flotherm thermal analysis software from flomerics.
this acquisition therefore has strong synergy with flomerics’ core business, and
represents a significant step for flomerics towards providing a complete
thermal-design solution for its customers.
the need for flomerics’ thermal analysis software is primarily driven by the
increasing miniaturization and thermal densities of electronic devices. exactly
the same trends drive the need for the t3ster. john parry, research manager for
flomerics, said, “flomerics and micred worked together for several years on the
ec-funded profit* research project to develop transient thermal models of chip
packages that accurately capture the thermal behaviour of even the most complex
ic devices. the t3ster embodies the knowledge and technology gained in this
project to automate the measurement procedure and enable thermal models to be
generated directly from the measurements. these validated models are then used
in thermal design software such as flotherm and flo/pcb to predict how a device
will perform in a particular end-user application. what’s particularly
interesting about micred’s approach is just how flexible the instrumentation and
software are - the equipment can also characterize other temperature-sensitive
components such as power leds, or mechanical components critical to thermal
management such as heat pipes, micro-fluidic coolers and heat sinks (for which
reliable design data is often hard to come by), or deduce the thermal resistance
values for interface materials and gap fillers. consequently the t3ster is
highly complementary to flomerics software tools.”
david tatchell, flomerics’ chief executive said “i am delighted to welcome
into the group the world-leading expertise that the micred team bring. the
t3ster has many applications in markets where flomerics is well established, and
we believe that there is great potential to expand the business. this is an
important step in delivering on our strategy of growing the company by
acquisition in a way that complements our organic growth plans.”
marta rencz, ceo of micred, said “we are very excited to be a part of
flomerics group. flomerics is the acknowledged standard setter in this field and
their infrastructure will enable us to maximize the potential of our products.”
* profit – the other partners in the project ware philips
research (coordinating), st microelectronics, infineon technologies, philips
semiconductors, technical university of budapest, tima, cqm and nokia. the
project ended in december 2003. |