Innovative heat sink designs cool "hot" FPGAs

Cutting-edge FPGAs are continually evolving to deliver higher performance. Unfortunately with that continual increase in performance comes a continual rise in the power dissipated by these complex semiconductor devices. And while the power dissipated by FPGAs is growing, the space allocated to cool these chips is shrinking. As a result, design engineers are always looking for better-performing heat sinks to cool their FPGAs.

In recent years, makers of thermal management products have introduced a wide array of new heat sinks that provide more cooling in a given volume. This article will help engineers looking for more-powerful heat sinks by describing recent innovations in heat sink design and analyzing their impact on heat sink performance. This discussion will also provide engineers with tools for analyzing new heat sink designs.

Innovations in heat sink design follow three basic trends. There are designs with more-aerodynamic fin shapes, innovative fin structures and more-conductive heat sink materials such as copper. To illustrate these trends and their significance, we will present two examples of advanced heat sink designs used to cool the type of cutting-edge FPGAs found in typical telecom and datacom applications.

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