Barry Dagan
Cool Innovations

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.