The world owes Phillips and Signetics a great debt in introducing the SO package. It offers a very small footprint, low cost, reliable, surface mounting package demanded by today's high density systems. However, since the thermal impedance of any package is, to the first order, inversely proportional to its area, the SO-8 imposes severe restrictions on the allowable power dissipation of the package. As pointed out in Reference (1), power dissipation raises the die junction temperature, and system reliability may be degraded. This brief sets forth a practical design method to ascertain what, if any, restrictions have to be placed on operating a linear IC in the SO package.