Charles Pfeil: Leading Successful BGA Design Solutions

About the Author

Charles Pfeil is an Engineering Director at Mentor Graphics, System Design Division. Charles has been in the PCB industry for over 40 years as a designer, owner of a service bureau, and has also worked in marketing and / or engineering management at Racal, ASI, Cadence, PADS, and VeriBest.

His accomplishments at Mentor Graphics include:

  • Inventor of Mentor Graphics' Xtreme Design Technology (XtremePCB and XtremeAR)
  • Inventor of Mentor Graphics' TeamPCB
  • Original product architect for Expedition PCB

BGA Breakouts & Routing

By Charles Pfeil
(Published May 2008)

There are many benefits to using the BGA package; however its greatest asset - the ability to provide an extremely dense array of thousands of pins - also turns out to be a tremendous problem for PCB designers. The BGA density and pin count continues to increase; yet, our ability to effectively design with these devices has not kept pace.
Fortunately, significant advancements in PCB fabrication technology have enabled further miniaturization in the manufacturing process. These improvements, along with new software and design methods specifically for BGAs provide a means to successfully design using these devices. This book explores the impact of dense BGAs with high pin-count on PCB design and provides solutions for inherent design challenges.

Articles

  • Bookmark his column in Printed Circuit Design and Fab magazine by UP Media
  • Fanout Patterns, Parts 1 & 2
    PCD&F.com, March 1, and April 1, 2008
    Successful fanout solutions provide escape routing for a combination of serial and parallel nets.
  • Size Matters
    PCD&F.com, February 1, 2008
    Next generation ASIC and FPGA packages with 0.8-mm pitch and over 2,000 pins will require the use of HDI to accomplish BGA routing.
  • BGA Breakouts and Routing
    PCD&F.com, January 1, 2008
    BGA miniaturization amplifies the design challenge of balancing high-performance signal integrity with fabrication cost reduction
  • BGA Breakout Challenges
    On-Board Technology, October 2007

Collateral