Heat spreader flatness detection

#The present invention generally relates to cooling heat generating components in electronic systems and to detecting if a heat spreader is loaded flat against and in thermal contact with the heat generating components.

#An apparatus, method, and computer program product embodiments generally relate to a heat spreader that includes at least one sensor that indicates that the heat spreader is flat against a chip stack. In certain embodiments, one or more nodes within a sensor are electrically connected. In another embodiment, the connection resistances may be compared to determine if the nodes within the sensor is relatively flat. The sensor flatness may be correlated to heat spreader flatness against the chip stack upon installation of the heat spreader to the chip stack. In other embodiments, sensor flatness may be communicated to a higher level electronic device such as a visual display that may be viewed by a user to determine whether the heat spreader is flat against the chip stack.

#These and other embodiments, features, aspects, and advantages will become better understood with reference to the following description, appended claims, and accompanying Figs.

#So that the manner in which the above recited features of the present invention are attained and can be understood in detail, a more particular description of the invention, briefly summarized above, may be had by reference to the embodiments thereof which are illustrated in the appended figures.

#It is to be noted, however, that the appended figures illustrate only typical embodiments of this invention and are therefore not to be considered limiting of its scope.

#FIG. 1 depicts a heat spreader according to an embodiment of the present invention.

#It will be readily understood that the components of the present invention, as generally described and illustrated in the Figs. herein, may be arranged and designed in a wide variety of different configurations. Thus, the following detailed description of the embodiments of the apparatus, device, method, or computer program product of the present invention, as represented in FIGS. 1 through 15, is not intended to limit the scope of the invention, as claimed, but is merely representative of selected embodiments of the invention.

#As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, various embodiments of the present invention may be embodied as a device, method, computer program product or any combination thereof. Accordingly, embodiments of the present invention may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that may all generally be referred to, for example as a “system.” Furthermore, embodiments of the present invention may take the form of a computer program product embodied in a tangible medium of expression having computer usable program code embodied thereupon.

#Any combination of one or more tangible computer usable or computer readable medium(s) may be utilized. The computer-usable or computer-readable medium may be, for example but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, device, or propagation medium. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the computer-readable medium would include the following: an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read-only memory (CDROM), an optical storage device, a tangible transmission media such as those supporting the Internet or an intranet, or a magnetic storage device. In the context of this document, a computer-usable or computer-readable medium may be any tangible medium that can contain, store, communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.