An Analytical Model of Temperature in Microprocessors

Temperature has become an important design constraint for high-performance microprocessors. Research on temperature-constrained microarchitecture requires an efficient modeling of temperature. We propose an analytical model of temperature, based on solving a boundary-value problem of heat conduction. The model gives steady-state and transient temperature at any point on the dissipating plane, assuming rectangle-shaped surface sources. The model can be used to reason about temperature. It can also be implemented in a performance/power microarchitecture simulator. We provide two examples illustrating these uses. Key-words: Microprocessor temperature, analytical model, steady state, transient, principle of superposition, point source, rectangle source, method of images