-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueShowing Some Constraint
A strong design constraint strategy carefully balances a wide range of electrical and manufacturing trade-offs. This month, we explore the key requirements, common challenges, and best practices behind building an effective constraint strategy.
All About That Route
Most designers favor manual routing, but today's interactive autorouters may be changing designers' minds by allowing users more direct control. In this issue, our expert contributors discuss a variety of manual and autorouting strategies.
Creating the Ideal Data Package
Why is it so difficult to create the ideal data package? Many of these simple errors can be alleviated by paying attention to detail—and knowing what issues to look out for. So, this month, our experts weigh in on the best practices for creating the ideal design data package for your design.
- Articles
- Columns
- Links
- Media kit
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Webinar Review: Thermal Integrity of High-Performance PCB Design
August 1, 2022 | Andy Shaughnessy, Design007 MagazineEstimated reading time: 2 minutes

Electrical and mechanical engineers may be working on the same product development teams, but they speak different languages, and they have completely different objectives. As a result, these folks almost never use the same software tools.
But Cadence’s new Celsius Thermal Solver is an exception to the rule. In a new CadenceTECHTALK webinar, “How Static and Dynamic IR Drop Analysis Can Help PCB Designs and Challenges,” product manager Melika Roshandell and SerDes SI/PI engineer Karthik Mahesh Rao explain how the EE and ME can both use the Celsius Thermal Solver to achieve their disparate objectives—at the chip and package/board levels.
Melika discusses the solver’s capabilities on the PCB and packaging side, which are accessible during pre-layout stages of the design cycle. Built on FEA and CFD engines, the solver can identify Joule heating on boards and packages, and help determine copper density, component spacing, and proper placement and size of thermal vias. She compares the results of the solver’s dynamic IR drop analysis with DC analysis, which only works with uniform temperature. Melika also points out the differences between typical thermal simulation and the solver’s electrothermal co-simulation.
Karthik then takes over, demonstrating electrothermal co-simulation by importing an entire CAD file into the Celsius environment. He utilizes PowerTree technology to organize heat sources and heat sinks—definitions, model names, target impedance constraints, etc. He places probes at different points on the PCB and tracks the transient results of components across various points of time. He shows how to trace power loss across each layer across time, and changes in power distribution as well. The 3D modeling capability depicts any potential hot spots on the board.
To illustrate how this PCB would operate in the real world, Karthik switches to the CFD analysis environment and places the design inside an enclosure. He adds a heat sink to one of the thermally problematic packages, and a cooling fan on the side of the enclosure, then traces the cooling flow across the component and board. Karthik closed with examples of the more comprehensive results attained through transient electrothermal co-simulation vs. traditional steady state analysis.
The Celsius Thermal Solver continues the “shift left” of signal integrity horsepower into the front end of the design cycle, and it offers functionality that will appeal to electrical and mechanical engineers. Maybe EEs and MEs will eventually speak the same language after all.
Melika and Karthik pack quite a bit into this half-hour webinar. If you’re dealing with thermal challenges in your high-speed PCB designs, you’ll want to check out the CadenceTECHTALK, “How Static and Dynamic IR Drop Analysis Can Help PCB Designs and Challenges.”
Related content:
- Shift Left: Moving Multiphysics into the Mainstream by Sherry Hess
- Successful Thermal Management of 3D-ICs: Accurate, Fast, Efficient, and Scalable with Celsius by Melika Roshandell
- The System Designer's Guide to... System Analysis: Electromagnetic Interference and Thermal Analysis of Electronic Systems by Brad Griffin
- The Cadence System Design Solutions Guide
- “Cadence Provides ‘Clarity’ in Design Tool” Interview with Brad Griffin, Design007 Magazine, (July 2022)
Suggested Items
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
07/18/2025 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007It may be the middle of the summer, but the news doesn’t quit, and there’s plenty to talk about this week, whether you’re talking technical or on a global scale. When I have to choose six items instead of my regular five, you know it’s good. I start by highlighting my interview with Martyn Gaudion on his latest book, share some concerning tariff news, follow that up with some promising (and not-so-promising) investments, and feature a paper from last January’s inaugural Pan-European Design Conference.
Elephantech Launches World’s Smallest-Class Copper Nanofiller
07/17/2025 | ElephantechJapanese deep-tech startup Elephantech has launched its cutting-edge 15 nm class copper nanofiller – the smallest class available globally. This breakthrough makes Elephantech one of the first companies in the world to provide such advanced material for commercial use.
Copper Price Surge Raises Alarms for Electronics
07/15/2025 | Global Electronics Association Advocacy and Government Relations TeamThe copper market is experiencing major turbulence in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 50% tariff on imported copper effective Aug. 1. Recent news reports, including from the New York Times, sent U.S. copper futures soaring to record highs, climbing nearly 13% in a single day as manufacturers braced for supply shocks and surging costs.
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
07/11/2025 | Andy Shaughnessy, Design007 MagazineThis week, we have quite a variety of news items and articles for you. News continues to stream out of Washington, D.C., with tariffs rearing their controversial head again. Because these tariffs are targeted at overseas copper manufacturers, this news has a direct effect on our industry.I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
Digital Twin Concept in Copper Electroplating Process Performance
07/11/2025 | Aga Franczak, Robrecht Belis, Elsyca N.V.PCB manufacturing involves transforming a design into a physical board while meeting specific requirements. Understanding these design specifications is crucial, as they directly impact the PCB's fabrication process, performance, and yield rate. One key design specification is copper thieving—the addition of “dummy” pads across the surface that are plated along with the features designed on the outer layers. The purpose of the process is to provide a uniform distribution of copper across the outer layers to make the plating current density and plating in the holes more uniform.