Electronic component manufacturers have traditionally provided models in SPICE format, so customers can simulate their application circuits and better understand the features, capabilities, and interactions of those parts in the system context. Now, with BCI-ROM, a similar and parallel thermal model supply chain can develop. This technology breakthrough arrives at a time of component design-in problems that are increasingly thermal in nature.
The VHDL-AMS implementation of BCI-ROM enforces heat-flow conservation, like KCL for electronic circuit simulation. This enables the creation of thermal networks to represent multi-component thermal interactions. Component manufacturers can capture the thermal characteristics of their components and provide them to the OEM circuit/system designers. These designers can connect them together through BCI-ROMs of their PCBs, on schematics that also include functional electronic circuits. They can then accurately simulate electro-thermal interactions in both steady-state and transient operation.