Qualcomm Heat Transfer Engineer

I worked for Qualcomm for two years as an Engineer performing heat transfer analysis on chipsets. I analyzed risks from thermally constrained performance, thermal implications for package changes, and temperature sensor placement with use of finite element analysis tools. I ramped up quickly and in less than a year became a die-level thermal specialist for various chipsets. Qualcomm provided me with the ability to thoroughly investigate thermal problems and limitations of specific chipsets. Working in this sector has given me invaluable learning and professional growth, as well as extensive experience in analysis.

I joined Qualcomm in August 2015, working for a thermal team that focuses on die-level thermal analysis. I learned the tools necessary for the job, such as Ansys Icepak, Mentor Graphics Flotherm, python, and some in-house tools, largely on my own initiative until formal training could be provided. I used those tools to help with thermal analysis in product development for various chipsets. I started in a co-point of contact role in which I successfully modeled the chipset and extracted performance boundary conditions to predict and compare thermally-constrained performance for the chipset. Also, I was a point of contact for Wi-Fi chipsets thermal support, a business unit that had not yet been supported by my team.  This role caused a challenge because the system thermal team developed their models in Flotherm, while the tools that the die-level thermal team used were compatible with Icepak. I overcame this challenge by working with the system level thermal team to learn more about Flotherm. I also worked with Ansys and Mentor graphics and I trained myself on and developed python code and methodologies to accurately export the Wi-Fi system model from Flotherm to Icepak, since the two tools were incompatible. Once the model was imported and validated, I ran analysis to find hotspot locations in order to correctly allocate and place temperature sensors. I was also a point of contact for a modem chipset. I completed analyses looking at the temporal evolution of temperature for different thermal use cases to find the time to mitigation and recommended temperature sensor allocation based on expected hotspot locations for the Mid-Level Design Review. In addition to working on product support I also co-authored different posters and presentations for thermal conferences, specifically I worked on “Thermal and Performance Trends in Value Tier MSMs” and “Thermal Modeling of 3DVLSI (3DV) Designs: Trends and Opportunities” for the 2016 Thermal summit and on “Thermal Cooling Solutions for Consumer Drones: Comparative Analysis” for the 2017 IEEE ITHERM conference.