Thermal interface material (TIM) refers to a material which may be positioned between two devices to facilitate a thermal coupling between the two devices. Applications for TIM include heat dissipation for electronic devices where the TIM is positioned between a heat-producing device (e.g., an electronic component) and a heat-dissipating structure (e.g., a heat sink). Non-limiting examples of TIM include thermally conductive pads or foam, thermal tape, liquid TIM (LTIM, e.g., such as thermal grease, thermal glue, thermal gap filler, etc.), phase-change materials (PCM), polymeric TIMs, and metal TIMs.
The material described herein is illustrated by way of example and not by way of limitation in the accompanying figures. For simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements illustrated in the figures are not necessarily drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some elements may be exaggerated relative to other elements for clarity. Further, where considered appropriate, reference labels have been repeated among the figures to indicate corresponding or analogous elements. In the figures:
One or more embodiments or implementations are now described with reference to the enclosed figures. While specific configurations and arrangements are discussed, it should be understood that this is done for illustrative purposes only. Persons skilled in the relevant art will recognize that other configurations and arrangements may be employed without departing from the spirit and scope of the description. It will be apparent to those skilled in the relevant art that techniques and/or arrangements described herein may also be employed in a variety of other systems and applications other than what is described herein.
While the following description sets forth various implementations that may be manifested in architectures such as system-on-a-chip (SoC) architectures for example, implementation of the techniques and/or arrangements described herein are not restricted to particular architectures and/or computing systems and may be implemented by any architecture and/or computing system for similar purposes. For instance, various architectures employing, for example, multiple integrated circuit (IC) chips and/or packages, and/or various computing devices and/or consumer electronic (CE) devices such as set top boxes, smartphones, etc., may implement the techniques and/or arrangements described herein. Further, while the following description may set forth numerous specific details such as logic implementations, types and interrelationships of system components, logic partitioning/integration choices, etc., claimed subject matter may be practiced without such specific details. In other instances, some material such as, for example, control structures and full software instruction sequences, may not be shown in detail in order not to obscure the material disclosed herein.
The material disclosed herein may be implemented in hardware, firmware, software, or any combination thereof. The material disclosed herein may also be implemented as instructions stored on a machine-readable medium, which may be read and executed by one or more processors. A machine-readable medium may include any medium and/or mechanism for storing or transmitting information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., a computing device). For example, a machine-readable medium may include read only memory (ROM); random access memory (RAM); magnetic disk storage media; optical storage media; flash memory devices; electrical, optical, acoustical or other forms of propagated signals (e.g., carrier waves, infrared signals, digital signals, etc.), and others.
References in the specification to “one implementation”, “an implementation”, “an example implementation”, etc., indicate that the implementation described may include a particular feature, structure, or characteristic, but every embodiment may not necessarily include the particular feature, structure, or characteristic. Moreover, such phrases are not necessarily referring to the same implementation. Further, when a particular feature, structure, or characteristic is described in connection with an embodiment, it is submitted that it is within the knowledge of one skilled in the art to effect such feature, structure, or characteristic in connection with other implementations whether or not explicitly described herein.
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Some embodiments of the method 30 may further include securing the flexible band to the first surface of the electronic device package with a thermal adhesive at block 36. In some embodiments, the flexible band may comprise a ring of compressible material at block 37. For example, the ring of compressible material may comprise a spring coil at block 38. In another example, the flexible band may comprise a collapsible ring at block 39. For example, the collapsible ring may comprise two or more concentric cylinders at block 40. In any of the embodiments herein, the TIM may comprise LTIM at block 41. In some embodiments, the heat conductive structure may comprise an enclosure of the electronic apparatus at block 42.
Some embodiment may advantageously provide a flexible retention ring for LTIM. LTIM may be used during assembly of various electronic products including, for example, solid state drive (SSD) products. The LTIM dispensing process is important because the correct application between electronic components and the SSD enclosure creates a proper thermal dissipation environment to avoid overheating of the electronic components during SSD operation. Unfortunately, problems like LTIM smears, an excess of LTIM, or a shortage of LTIM may occur due to multiple process and material issues like improper dispensing, LTIM liquefying problems, SSD assembly or handling issues. Some embodiments may advantageously overcome one or more the foregoing problems.
Some embodiments, for example, may include technology to place a flexible retention ring on top of the electronic components that require LTIM application. Advantageously, the ring helps contain the LTIM in its place on top of the electronic component and may avoid or reduce smearing. In accordance with some embodiment, the retention ring may have the flexibility to adjust to the height between the electronic component and the top SSD enclosure. After the flexible retention ring is in place on the electronic component, the LTIM may be dispensed inside the ring. The height of the flexible retention ring automatically adjusts after the top of the SSD enclosure is placed onto the assembly. During placement of the top of the SSD enclosure, some of the LTIM may overflow. Such overflow does not present a serious problem, however, because most of the LTIM remains inside the flexible retention ring to provide good thermal contact between the electronic component and the heat-dissipating top of the SSD enclosure. In any event, embodiments of the appropriately sized and placed flexible retention ring advantageously reduce the LTIM application issues related to smearing, application excess, or LTIM shortage. The improved assembly process and resulting apparatus/device/product advantageously ensures that electronic components that require thermal dissipation through LTIM keep the LTIM in place more robustly regardless of application problems or handling issues.
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Those skilled in the art will appreciate that numerous other designs and materials may be utilized to make a suitable flexible retention ring, as long as the LTIM can be properly contained and the ring has the flexibility to adjust its height as needed for the electronic component to be thermally coupled to the desired heat-dissipating structure. Those skilled in the art will further appreciate that suitable shapes and structures, other than circular or ring-shaped, may be utilized for other embodiments of a flexible retention structure, depending on the particular application/device/product to assemble.
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The technology discussed herein may be provided in various computing systems (e.g., including a non-mobile computing device such as a desktop, workstation, server, rack system, etc., a mobile computing device such as a smartphone, tablet, Ultra-Mobile Personal Computer (UMPC), laptop computer, ULTRABOOK computing device, smart watch, smart glasses, smart bracelet, etc., and/or a client/edge device such as an Internet-of-Things (IoT) device (e.g., a sensor, a camera, etc.)).
As used in this application and in the claims, a list of items joined by the term “one or more of” may mean any combination of the listed terms. For example, the phrase “one or more of A, B, and C” and the phrase “one or more of A, B, or C” both may mean A; B; C; A and B; A and C; B and C; or A, B and C. Various components of the systems described herein may be implemented in software, firmware, and/or hardware and/or any combination thereof. For example, various components of the systems or devices discussed herein may be provided, at least in part, by hardware of a computing SoC such as may be found in a computing system such as, for example, a smart phone. Those skilled in the art may recognize that systems described herein may include additional components that have not been depicted in the corresponding figures. For example, the systems discussed herein may include additional components such as bit stream multiplexer or de-multiplexer modules and the like that have not been depicted in the interest of clarity.
While implementation of the example processes discussed herein may include the undertaking of all operations shown in the order illustrated, the present disclosure is not limited in this regard and, in various examples, implementation of the example processes herein may include only a subset of the operations shown, operations performed in a different order than illustrated, or additional operations.
In addition, any one or more of the operations discussed herein may be undertaken in response to instructions provided by one or more computer program products. Such program products may include signal bearing media providing instructions that, when executed by, for example, a processor, may provide the functionality described herein. The computer program products may be provided in any form of one or more machine-readable media. Thus, for example, a processor including one or more graphics processing unit(s) or processor core(s) may undertake one or more of the blocks of the example processes herein in response to program code and/or instructions or instruction sets conveyed to the processor by one or more machine-readable media. In general, a machine-readable medium may convey software in the form of program code and/or instructions or instruction sets that may cause any of the devices and/or systems described herein to implement at least portions of the operations discussed herein and/or any portions the devices, systems, or any module or component as discussed herein.
As used in any implementation described herein, the term “module” refers to any combination of software logic, firmware logic, hardware logic, and/or circuitry configured to provide the functionality described herein. The software may be embodied as a software package, code and/or instruction set or instructions, and “hardware”, as used in any implementation described herein, may include, for example, singly or in any combination, hardwired circuitry, programmable circuitry, state machine circuitry, fixed function circuitry, execution unit circuitry, and/or firmware that stores instructions executed by programmable circuitry. The modules may, collectively or individually, be embodied as circuitry that forms part of a larger system, for example, an integrated circuit (IC), system on-chip (SoC), and so forth.
Various embodiments may be implemented using hardware elements, software elements, or a combination of both. Examples of hardware elements may include processors, microprocessors, circuits, circuit elements (e.g., transistors, resistors, capacitors, inductors, and so forth), integrated circuits, application specific integrated circuits (ASIC), programmable logic devices (PLD), digital signal processors (DSP), field programmable gate array (FPGA), logic gates, registers, semiconductor device, chips, microchips, chip sets, and so forth. Examples of software may include software components, programs, applications, computer programs, application programs, system programs, machine programs, operating system software, middleware, firmware, software modules, routines, subroutines, functions, methods, procedures, software interfaces, application program interfaces (API), instruction sets, computing code, computer code, code segments, computer code segments, words, values, symbols, or any combination thereof. Determining whether an embodiment is implemented using hardware elements and/or software elements may vary in accordance with any number of factors, such as desired computational rate, power levels, heat tolerances, processing cycle budget, input data rates, output data rates, memory resources, data bus speeds and other design or performance constraints.
One or more aspects of at least one embodiment may be implemented by representative instructions stored on a machine-readable medium which represents various logic within the processor, which when read by a machine causes the machine to fabricate logic to perform the techniques described herein. Such representations, known as IP cores may be stored on a tangible, machine readable medium and supplied to various customers or manufacturing facilities to load into the fabrication machines that actually make the logic or processor.
While certain features set forth herein have been described with reference to various implementations, this description is not intended to be construed in a limiting sense. Hence, various modifications of the implementations described herein, as well as other implementations, which are apparent to persons skilled in the art to which the present disclosure pertains are deemed to lie within the spirit and scope of the present disclosure.
It will be recognized that the embodiments are not limited to the embodiments so described, but can be practiced with modification and alteration without departing from the scope of the appended claims. For example, the above embodiments may include specific combination of features. However, the above embodiments are not limited in this regard and, in various implementations, the above embodiments may include the undertaking only a subset of such features, undertaking a different order of such features, undertaking a different combination of such features, and/or undertaking additional features than those features explicitly listed. The scope of the embodiments should, therefore, be determined with reference to the appended claims, along with the full scope of equivalents to which such claims are entitled.
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20200214175 A1 | Jul 2020 | US |