Fluent's New Iceboard 1.0 Enables Quick Thermal Verification for Printed Circuit Board Designers.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

LEBANON, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 2004

Fluent Inc. announces the release of Iceboard 1.0, its new board-level thermal validation tool for printed circuit board designers. Although Iceboard is 100% compatible with Fluent's comprehensive thermal modeling software, Icepak(R), it is a stand-alone tool, intended only for board designers. "Iceboard's sole purpose is to help board designers to quickly verify their designs for thermal compliance. Board designers will appreciate the ease with which they can import their neutral ECAD files from software like Cadence Allegro or Mentor BoardStation and filter the data," says Iceboard product manager Rajesh Nair. "And when they have their results, they can easily export HTML reports and Icepak-compatible files for further processing in a seamless, integrated fashion," he concludes.

Streamlined Problem Setup

Iceboard employs computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology to provide a comprehensive prediction of flow and heat transfer. The software utilizes a sequential series of file import, setup, and reporting wizards to walk the user through the process of thermal verification. The user environment closely mimics the ECAD experience, with a tree-based model manager, 3D mouse-based view manipulation, and dynamic rotation, translation and zoom. Pre-created Icepak library objects can be applied to the thermal model selectively when a high-level of detail is needed for a high-fidelity result. Although the preprogrammed selection options for component and board materials and mesh sizes almost never need to be changed, the user has wide-ranging ability to fine-tune every option. Results are presented in an automatically-assembled HTML report. Visualization and plotting options are designed to present the information most useful to thermal verification at the click of a button.

Rapid Turnaround

Iceboard has a full-featured computational fluid dynamics engine running under the hood, the same one found in Fluent's flagship general-purpose flow analysis tool, FLUENT(TM), and its electronics cooling-specific derivative, Icepak. Users see the benefit of this in the time-to-solution and reliability of the results. A 50-component board can be verified for thermal compliance in 15 minutes or less.

Pricing and Availability

Iceboard 1.0 is now available worldwide through Fluent's network of offices and distributors for an annual cost of $12,000 per seat.

About Fluent

Fluent is the world's largest provider of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software and consulting services. Fluent's software is used for simulation, visualization, and analysis of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, and chemical reactions. It is a vital part of the computer-aided engineering (CAE) process for companies around the world and is deployed in nearly every manufacturing industry. Using Fluent's software, product development, design and research engineers build virtual prototypes and simulate the performance of proposed and existing designs, allowing them to improve design quality while reducing cost and speeding time to market. Fluent's corporate headquarters is located in Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA, with offices in Belgium, England, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, and Sweden. Its CFD software is also available around the world through joint ventures, partnerships, and distributors in Korea, Australia, Brazil, China, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, Middle East, and most European countries.

Icepak and FLUENT are registered trademarks of Fluent Incorporated.