Virtual prototyping for high density packaging systems

Very early in an electronic design cycle the physical buildup of a system, such as bonding method, substrate technology, and number of layers, needs to be chosen before any layout is performed. But when developing high density systems, a huge number of technology choices are available, each having impact on various aspects of the system performance. This paper describes virtual prototyping as a method for systematically analyzing and choosing the suitable buildups and selecting one of them in a cost-performance analysis for implementation and layout. Unlike former design advisors, our method analyzes several possibilities in parallel, allowing for a better design space exploration. The framework is implemented in the Java based tool JavaCAD, JavaCAD manages the different buildups and provides a size/layer count estimation for all first level interconnect/packages on various substrate technologies. It calculates the component footprints, analyzes the routing with as few data as available and allows cost estimation of all feasible buildups. The benefits of our approach are illustrated in the design of a 9:4 satellite switch operating at 2.4 GHz.