AN 944: Thermal Modeling for Agilex™ 7 FPGAs with the Intel® FPGA Power and Thermal Calculator

ID 683810
Date 11/07/2024
Public

4.1. Agilex™ 7 Compact Thermal Model (CTM)

The system-level thermal analysis of the Agilex™ 7 FPGA requires the use of its compact thermal model (CTM) in a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) tool. The CTMs are simplified mechanical models of the packages with modified thermal properties so they can predict an accurate case temperature with uniform power distribution for each die. The results of the CFD analysis are valid only to evaluate the TCASE of the package. Power values for input to the model come from the Intel® FPGA Power and Thermal Calculator (PTC).

The IHS center temperature or TCASE-CENTER is useful to evaluate the cooling design. If the CFD-calculated TCASE-CENTER is less than or equal to the TCASE reported by the PTC, then the maximum TJ specified in the PTC will not be exceeded.

The latest CTMs for use with Agilex™ 7 devices, are offered in ECXML format, which is compatible with the following CFD tools:

  • Icepak* from ANSYS
  • Flotherm* from Mentor Graphics*
  • 6SigmaET* from Future Facilities
If your company does not use any of the above CFD tools, Intel® can provide a step file of the CTM, by request. The step file model is compatible with other thermal tools, such as:
  • Thermal Analysis* from SolidWorks
  • Thermal Analysis by Autodesk

Step models do not have built in thermal material properties; that data is provided separately, and you must add it to the models.