Speaking of Flomerics, it appears as though nVidia used thermal models to optimize package design and develop thermal design guidelines for the nForce4 media and communications processor with some of that companies software.

"NVIDIA has developed a new process that substantially reduces the amount of time required to simulate the thermal performance of new products. The new process uses the web-based "Flopack" software from Flomerics to quickly produce a computationally-efficient thermal behavioral model - known as a "compact" model - which accurately represents a component's thermal characteristics in any end-user environment. "We simply describe the die size and heat dissipation and the package characteristics, such as substrate size and number of balls, in the Flopack web site and hit go," said Mark Hemmeyer, Mechanical Engineer for NVIDIA. "Then the web-site generates a compact thermal model that predicts the temperature of the various elements within the package accurately regardless of the computational environment in which it is placed." Hemmeyer also prepared a thermal design guide that provides answers to questions such as whether or not a heatsink is required under certain ambient temperature and airflow conditions and what type of heatsink provides the best performance."