Efficiency Evaluation of Full-Wave Electromagnetic Simulation Techniques in 3D WB-PBGA Package Modeling

Package modeling and simulation is the essence of every designer daily work flow. With a trend towards ever more complex designs, the potential reward for designer is the ability to solve previously intractable problems quickly and accurately. Experts still argue about the fastest and most elegant approaches to solving electromagnetic problems yet no single method has emerged as an outright winner [1]. This paper presents a case study to make comparison between two enormously commercially-used full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation techniques in the advanced packaging technology. It examines the efficiency in terms of simulation time and memory requirement when modeling and simulating a 3D WB-PBGA package. Simulation results in both frequency and time domains have been obtained and correlated with empirical data.