AM5706: Heatsink reference

Ryan,

Thank you for your patience.

You'll need a few pieces of information:

The Thermal Design Guide for DSP and ARM Application Processors [1] lists general guidelines and equations for estimating your heatsink requirements

You can refer to the AM571x Power Consumption Summary (1GHz power only) [2] to get an idea of power consumption based on usecase, or, use the Power Estimation Tool [3] for finer grained power estimation.

Armed with the processor's thermal characteristics (resistances) in the datasheet you can either solve for maximum heatsink thermal resistance based on maximum junction temperature, or, if you have a selection of heatsinks already, look up the thermal resistance from the manufacturer and determine your junction temperature.

For a real system, you'd want to do thermal modeling of the system, using the thermal models we provide for each AM57xx processor.

Regards,
Mike

[1] http://www.ti.com/lit/an/sprabi3b/sprabi3b.pdf
[2] http://www.ti.com/lit/an/sprac78/sprac78.pdf
[3] http://www.ti.com/tool/powerest