Advanced Packaging Roadshow: Northwest Passage

Early this spring the Advanced Packaging Roadshow flew out to Wilsonville, Oregon, to visit Mentor Graphics Corporation’s U.S. headquarters. Mentor, a world leader in hardware and software design solutions for some of the most successful electronics and semiconductor companies worldwide is situated in a beautiful, park-like setting. The campus buildings provide 300,000 square feet of office and laboratory space for the 1,000 employees in this particular location, 4,200 employees worldwide.

Mentor’s revenue stands at over $850 million in the past twelve months, and the company controls more than 19% of the electronics design automation (EDA) market worldwide, ranking third in that market. Growth through internal development seems to be the company’s focus. The beauty of nature &#151 with nutria feeding on the grounds, ducklings gathering in the lake, tulips in bloom, and greening outdoor soccer fields &#151 provided a great spot for quiet thinking.

We met up with Suzanne Graham, senior public relations manager; David Wiens, business development director for the company’s systems design division; Ryerson Schwark, director, public and investor relations, Mark Forbes, corporate marketing; and Larry Toda, senior marketing communications manager for the systems design division so that they could gives us some background information on the company. Wiens, who has been in the industry for 25 years, reviewed the product portfolio in electronics design considering the enterprise context, and systems design challenges specifically.

“Mentor offers solutions for IC, FPGA, chip packaging, and printed circuit board design. ,” said Wiens.. For IC design, they work within a design-to-silicon platform, offering comprehensive design for manufacturing (DFM) solutions to improve yields. In the PCB design area, the company has technology that enables design of high-performance products, including system design entry, mixed signal verification, SI analysis, and PCB place and route. In PCB design, they lead worldwide rankings with Mentor at 34%, Cadence at 24%, Zuken at 10%, and others at 32%.

“In the broad view, the advanced package and PCB design tools and techniques are similar, though the scales may be different,” says Wiens. The focus, however, may vary. In packages the design engineer is thinking more about conduction and thermal issues, signal integrity, increased speeds, reduced scales. And technology flows downhill from silicon via etch methodologies, to microvias on the PCB.

System design discontinuities or significant changes in design and / or manufacturing processes that require retooling of the design environment and retraining of the design team can be the most difficult problems for design engineers. In packaging, for instance, some of the discontinuities include chip scale packages (CSPs), chip-on-board (COB), micro BGAs, embedded devices, high-density interconnect (HDI) with micro vias, stacked die, integrated RF, performance-driven design, and collaborative design. The more discontinuities, the tougher the interconnect, the more competitive skill sets make a difference, and the more competitive differentiation brings out the best in Mentors’ gifted engineering team.

When the new product introductions require increased functionality and performance with a decreased form factor, reduced cost and shortened cycle time, advanced interconnect sets the stage, Engineers at Mentor see PCB and system-in-package (SiP) converging along the lines of HDIs, embedded passives and actives, wire bonds, flip chip, stacked die, and integrated RF. When all things come together, the engineers must know the design of the package and the design of the PCB precisely. There are so many ways to interconnect a system: HDI layers and microvias, embedding, substrate interconnect tapered fanout of lead frames, wire bonds, flip chips, and adhesives add up to a myriad of choices.

In an HDI package the densities present difficult issues. If a device as over 2,000 pins at <0.4 mm pitch, the challenges are only too evident. EDA tools have to create a footprint for the package, the microvia structure and clearance definition must be known. Localized rules under the components must also be understood. Routing is at 45° for the BGA-type fanout. Vias inside SMD land pads help solidify space, but add increased complexity. Mentor's hardware models the complex pattern so that it can be understood and thermal analysis must be done as well. Without design engineering, complex HDI packages would be impossible to produce.

At times it’s better to take an integrated system design approach, which takes advantage of all types of design skills from engineers who specialize. If end product complexity requires multi-discipline collaboration to optimize performance and ensure compatibility, then many engineers will need to review the design team challenges in the type of signal (analog/digital/RF), to the electro-mechanical design, to hardware and software designs, to electronics/electrical signal interconnect.

“In the final solution, there are many reasons to use an integrated approach.” As an example, Mentor recently partnered with Agilent on a solution to integrate PCB and RF design processes, resulting in reduced design time and cost, and optimized product performance.

The Roadshow crew walked into individual offices where engineers worked on designs for HDI products. At times, they worked in partnership with a nearby staff member. Each engineer had doors to close in case they needed some introspective time. We toured other buildings on campus to see the company store, exercise area, pool tables, barber/beauty shop, and cafeteria.

As we left one building we walked around the lake where new goslings followed their parents awkwardly. One building, the Tom Bruggere Child Development Center provided child care for employees for a fee. “When the company was founded in 1981, the three owners had young families and needed a child care service,” Suzanne Graham said. The one at Mentor has won awards for the quality of care provided. From what we could see from our visit at Mentor Graphics, it looked like a great place to take on the challenges of EDA and a place that also took into consideration the needs of its employees.

In Part 1 of Northwest Passage, Near Nature; Near Perfect , the Roadshow crew visited Honeywell Electronic Materials.

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