Compact Thermal Sensors for Dense CPU Thermal Monitoring and Regulation: A Review

Shor, Joseph

doi:10.1109/jsen.2020.3029852

Cited by 13 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…In the recent literature, many low-area, low-power silicon thermal sensors have been proposed and developed. Note that these sensors are widely employed for the on-chip thermal management of integrated circuits and, hence, the area and power overload caused by the thermal sensor(s) should be as low as possible [34]. For instance, a silicon sensor based on MOSFET transistors operating in weak inversion with a power consumption of tens of nW was suggested in [35].…”

Section: E New Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tutorial on Thermal Sensors in the 200th Anniversary of the Seebeck Effect

Reverter

2021

IEEE Sensors J.

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Two noteworthy events associated to the physics of thermal sensors were demonstrated and announced in 1821, exactly two hundred years ago. The first event was the Seebeck effect, which led to the development of thermocouples. The second was the study of the thermal dependence of the resistivity of pure metals, which led to the design of resistance temperature detectors (RTD). Sensors' science and technology has experienced remarkable advances in the last decades, but these two types of thermal sensors, whose physics were announced 200 years ago, are still nowadays the main sensor technology in many industrial applications that require the measurement of extreme temperatures. In such a 200 th anniversary, this tutorial aims to explain the operating principle, subtypes, input-output characteristic, limitations, and new trends under research of the four main types of thermal sensor: RTDs, thermistors, silicon sensors, and thermocouples. These are also compared with each other, highlighting the main advantages and disadvantages of each sensor technology.

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Section: E New Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tutorial on Thermal Sensors in the 200th Anniversary of the Seebeck Effect

Reverter

2021

IEEE Sensors J.

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“…Thus, an appropriate management of thermal dynamics including thermal monitoring is required to avoid performance degradation and lifetime reduction of ICs [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. On-chip thermal behavior can be obtained by adopting an on-chip distributed oscillator network [ 5 , 6 ], where the frequency variations generated by the integrated oscillators indicate the thermal changes in the chip. Then, using the Gradient Direction Sensor (GDS) technique the authors could monitor the temperature source of the thermal sensors on the surface of the chip [ 7 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Real-Time Monitoring of Thermal Peaks in Systems-on-Chip (SoC)

Oukaira

Hassan

Ali

et al. 2022

Sensors

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This paper presents a method to monitor the thermal peaks that are major concerns when designing Integrated Circuits (ICs) in various advanced technologies. The method aims at detecting the thermal peak in Systems on Chip (SoC) using arrays of oscillators distributed over the area of the chip. Measured frequencies are mapped to local temperatures that are used to produce a chip thermal mapping. Then, an indication of the local temperature of a single heat source is obtained in real-time using the Gradient Direction Sensor (GDS) technique. The proposed technique does not require external sensors, and it provides a real-time monitoring of thermal peaks. This work is performed with Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), which acts as a System-on-Chip, and the detected heat source is validated with a thermal camera. A maximum error of 0.3 °C is reported between thermal camera and FPGA measurements.

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“…Hot spots might appear either due to the presence of a defect in the circuit structure [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ] or by a nonuniform power dissipation on the die surface, which is a common situation in microprocessors [ 4 , 10 ]. In complex digital systems, such as microprocessors, temperature sensors are built-in within the same silicon die in order to ensure reliable system performance, i.e., they perform power-temperature monitoring to control the activation of cooling systems, to modulate microprocessor supply voltage or clock frequency, or to assert if the workload of a specific microprocessor block can be increased or should be reduced to avoid nonuniform power distributions [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. Nevertheless, thermal monitoring is not restricted to digital circuits, but used as well in analog circuits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

BPF-Based Thermal Sensor Circuit for On-Chip Testing of RF Circuits

Altet

Barajas

Mateo

et al. 2021

Sensors

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A new sensor topology meant to extract figures of merit of radio-frequency analog integrated circuits (RF-ICs) was experimentally validated. Implemented in a standard 0.35 μm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, it comprised two blocks: a single metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) transistor acting as temperature transducer, which was placed near the circuit to monitor, and an active band-pass filter amplifier. For validation purposes, the temperature sensor was integrated with a tuned radio-frequency power amplifier (420 MHz) and MOS transistors acting as controllable dissipating devices. First, using the MOS dissipating devices, the performance and limitations of the different blocks that constitute the temperature sensor were characterized. Second, by using the heterodyne technique (applying two nearby tones) to the power amplifier (PA) and connecting the sensor output voltage to a low-cost AC voltmeter, the PA’s output power and its central frequency were monitored. As a result, this topology resulted in a low-cost approach, with high linearity and sensitivity, for RF-IC testing and variability monitoring.

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Compact Thermal Sensors for Dense CPU Thermal Monitoring and Regulation: A Review

Cited by 13 publications

References 67 publications

A Tutorial on Thermal Sensors in the 200th Anniversary of the Seebeck Effect

A Tutorial on Thermal Sensors in the 200th Anniversary of the Seebeck Effect

Towards Real-Time Monitoring of Thermal Peaks in Systems-on-Chip (SoC)

BPF-Based Thermal Sensor Circuit for On-Chip Testing of RF Circuits

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