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The ATE (Automatic Test Equipment) market for semiconductor test is moving quickly toward higher performance
and higher parallelism, while at the same time Teradyne is leading the market in smaller, space-efficient
test cells. Board power densities are therefore increasing and pushing the air cooling envelope ever farther.
For Teradyne's next generation ATE memory tester, Coolit was utilized early in the design phase to assure
that aggressive junction temperature goals could be met with traditional air cooling technologies and to
perform design optimization studies.
Shown is a Coolit model of a PC assembly that dissipates over 800 watts. The model was created in just a few
days, and included enough detail to predict case temperatures for all critical components.
Once the model was created, the software's intuitive interface allowed engineers to quickly and easily
modify thermal parameters such as airflow, heatsink materials, fin pitch and thickness, and interface
conductivity. Coolit allowed Teradyne's engineers to design and optimize a thermal management system for a
new product long before hardware was available.
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