If You Can't Stand the Heat

Aug. 31, 2016

If you live in the USA (and especially the southwest, as I do) I don’t have to tell you, it’s been a hot summer. Below is a snap of the thermometer on my back patio from last weekend.

As I sat there (mind you: I had a very cold beer in hand) I was thinking about computers (yes, even on the weekend, we Abaco folks think about computers). I was imagining just how long the computer I am writing this blog on now would hold up in this kind of heat; would it make it through the time it takes to write one post? 

Likely not, I reckoned—and then it hit me; this is the kind of heat every one of our computers at Abaco must work in. In fact, they work in even higher temperatures; 85 degrees centigrade, nearly 70 degrees hotter than what I was feeling! And they use commercial parts, just like my workstation. More to the point, they have to do it day after day without fail in order to protect the lives of our warfighters. 

New perspective

I knew this before, of course, but now I gained a whole new perspective on what we must do to design, build and deliver the powerful computers we do; what innovation we must employ to coax performance from these commercial processors. Thermal design and packaging, then, clearly are equally important to simple performance.

At Abaco, we have over 30 years of experience in thermal design and packaging of processors, memory and other microelectronic devices. Delivering consistent, reliable performance to the markets we serve has been the most important feature of our products throughout our history. 

Through those years, we have combined the latest analytical and modeling tools with new materials and fabrication techniques. We’ve put in place rigorous testing and verification with experienced designers, engineers and manufacturing specialists. We ensure that every design, no matter how sophisticated the devices we must use become, achieves that standard of performance and robustness for which we are known.

Around here, we say: “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the business.”

About the Author

Larry Schaffer | Bus Dev

Larry Schaffer has been with us in a business development role since 2001, and works to create and maintain long-term, strategic relationships with key companies engaged in embedded computing for ground systems applications with a strong emphasis on image processing and distribution. He was born in Pennsylvania and educated as an Electrical Engineer in New Jersey and California (where he now lives). Just don’t ask him to tell you about being a war baby.

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