Flomerics Acquires MicReD

MARLBOROUGH, Mass., April 29 -- Flomerics, a thermal anaysis software developer, announced today the acquisition of MicReD (Microelectronics Research & Development Ltd.), a Hungarian company formed in 1997 as a spinoff from Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

MicReD's main product is the "T3Ster" (pronounced "Trister"), which provides thermal characterization of integrated circuit (IC) devices, including stacked-die and system-in-package devices. Organizations using the T3Ster include IBM, Infineon, Intel, Nokia, Philips, Samsung and ST Microelectronics, which are also users of Flomerics' Flotherm thermal analysis software.

John Parry, research manager for Flomerics, said the need for its software and for the T3Ster is primarily driven by the increasing miniaturization and thermal densities of electronic devices. Flomerics and MicReD worked together for several years on a UK-funded research project to develop transient thermal models of chip packages that accurately capture the thermal behaviour of even the most complex IC devices.

"The T3Ster embodies the knowledge and technology gained in this project to automate the measurement procedure and enable thermal models to be generated directly from the measurements," Parry said. "These validated models are then used in thermal design software such as Flotherm and Flo/PCB to predict how a device will perform in a particular end-user application."

He said MicReD's equipment can also characterize other temperature-sensitive components, such as power LEDs, or mechanical components critical to thermal management, such as heat pipes, micro-fluidic coolers and heat sinks; it can also deduce the thermal resistance values for interface materials and gap fillers.

For more information, visit: www.flomerics.com