FAQ

These are answers to some of the frequently asked questions about 3D-ICE. If you do not find answers to your questions below, please contact the 3D-ICE users mailing list (You have to subscribe to it first).

    • What is liquid cooling for ICs?
      Liquid cooling for ICs is the use of fluids other than air to cool down integrated circuits. This technology has existed for a long time, but is now being developed for large-scale production by various companies and laboratories to meet the challenges of rising heat fluxes from ICs. More details about this technology can be found in the publications section of this website.
    • What operating system does 3D-ICE run on?
      We have written 3D-ICE in C to run on GNU Linux. We are also trying to port it on Fedora Linux.
    • What packages do I need to install before I can use 3D-ICE?
      You need gcc 4.1.2 and the SuperLU math library. Detailed information about the installation, compiling and running of 3D-ICE can be found in the user guide.
    • Can 3D-ICE be used as a stand-alone simulator?
      Yes. 3D-ICE works both as a stand-alone simulator and a software library. This means that once you have installed the tool and run the Makefile the 3D-ICE-Emulator executable is created, it functions as any other application on your computer. You can then use this executable with different input project files without having to change or recompile the software source codes.
    • Has 3D-ICE been validated?
      Yes. 3D-ICE is the first simulator for liquid-cooled ICs that has been validated against measurements an actual liquid-cooled 3D IC stack. In addition, we also have validated it against simulations from ANSYS CFX.
Validation of 3D-ICE against measurements from an actual liquid-cooled 3D IC Validation of 3D-ICE against simulations in ANSYS CFX
    • Can I create any kind of IC structure and floorplan architectures?
      Yes absolutely! 3D-ICE allows maximum flexibility in terms of user defined problems. To guide you in creating your own projects, example stk and flp files have been included with the package.
    • Can I specify any kind of meshing dimensions for the structure?
      Yes. There are absolutely no restrictions in the size of the cells you can specify for the discretization of the problem and the simulation. However, understand that the smaller the cell-size the larger the memory consumption and the simulation time.
    • Does 3D-ICE give stable results?
      Yes. Numerical stability is guaranteed in 3D-ICE irrespective of the cell size or the time stepping size you choose in the simulations.