Systematic design and performance study of natural cooling structures for multi-chip domain controllers

The multi-chip domain controller (MCDC) serves as the central processing unit of intelligent connected vehicles, humanoid robots, and embodied intelligence, representing a core functional component for enabling advanced intelligence. However, with the increasing challenges of high-power consumption, miniaturization, and high integration of internal electronic components, thermal management has become a critical issue. Under low-power conditions, conventional natural cooling designs-such as plate-fin and pin-fin structures-coupled with uniform cooling strategies applied indiscriminately to all components, are no longer adequate to meet the thermal dissipation requirements of MCDC printed circuit board assembly (PCBA). To address this issue, this study proposes a systematic design methodology for natural cooling structures in MCDCs. The thermal performance of the systematically designed structures is analyzed using numerical calculations and finite element simulations. A thermal performance test platform is established to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed natural cooling system. The results indicate that, compared to the original natural cooling structure, the systematically designed cooling configuration achieves temperature reductions of 5.47–11.22 °C for key electronic components, with an average temperature drop of 7.98 °C. The main chip exhibits a temperature reduction of 11.22 °C, corresponding to a 9.51% decrease. This research provides a theoretical foundation and methodological support for efficient systematic natural cooling and focused thermal management strategies in domain controller products for applications such as intelligent connected vehicles.