Virtuoso Meets Maxwell: How to Route a Package in Virtuoso?

'Virtuoso Meets Maxwell' is a blog series aimed at exploring the capabilities and potential of Virtuoso RF Solution and Virtuoso MultiTech. So, how does Virtuoso meets Maxwell? Now, the Virtuoso platform supports RF designs, and the RF designers measure the physical and radiation effects by using the Maxwell's equations. In addition to providing insights into the useful software enhancements, this series broadcasts the voices of different bloggers and experts about their knowledge and experience of various tools in the Virtuoso IC-Packaging world along with the nuances of RF, microwave, and high frequency designs. Watch out for our posts on Mondays.

We all have heard about the Cadence^® Virtuoso^® RF Solution. This solution provides an efficient way of dealing with dies, packages, and boards in a single environment. Prior to this solution, only dies could be smoothly created and edited in Virtuoso platform. Now, with this groundbreaking solution, it is also possible to edit packages and boards.

One of the major tasks while creating a package is routing. If you have a complex layout and you need to move traces or vias around the board, what can you do to decrease your routing time? Depending on your design needs, this blog lets you look at the different routing concepts.

• How to route a package?
• How to deal with planes?
• How to walk around or push existing routing?
• How to route in Edit-in-Concert^TM technology?

How to route a package?

The package routing has some specific elements as compared to IC routing:

• Rounded extension to ease any angle routing.
• Drills which could be rounded (same usage as IC vias but different creation process).
• Connect pads, bumps, bond fingers, drills, components pins, etc… on their center otherwise it is considered as an open.

The interactive routing capabilities in Virtuoso RF solution include all these elements, with of course, considering its ease of use. To route a package, start the Create Wire command and click any component pins, bond fingers, or bumps to start digitizing a trace (wire in IC world). Choose the routing style (Manhattan or any angle) as you route the design. You can also change the layer by adding drills and choose the output layer. You can exit on any layer and then smartly complete it by overlapping the objects to complete the routing.

How to deal with planes?

In a package, some of the layer planes are reserved for ground connection. For example, in a four layer package, we could imagine two planes (Metal2 and Metal4) reserved for ground connection. We then only have Metal3 and Metal1 to route, which could not be enough. So, you may need to use part of the ground planes. In such cases, the planes need to be updated accordingly. To avoid some tedious manual manipulation, we provide an automatic command to do the update with respect to spacing rules, obviously. 

How to walk around or push existing routing?

To make the life of a layout designer even easier, some capabilities to hug and to push existing routing have been added. The push and shove capabilities are cool for quickly moving elements around in a board without manually rerouting the surrounding traces. When working with vias, the attached traces will follow the via around the board. But, there are some things to consider when working with the push and shove routing capabilities. The Create Wire and Stretch commands of interactive routing let you push existing routing to find some space to route in a high-density environment, obviously, according to the DRC rules. This capability also allows a layout designer to hug (walk around) existing routing and objects to minimize the modifications, which makes the ECO much easier, faster, and less risky.

How to route in Edit-in-Concert^TM technology ?

In the following blog, you would have seen the strength of  the Edit-in-Concert^TM technology:

Virtuoso Meets Maxwell: Learn Your Moves – We’re Doing an Edit-in-Concert

With Edit-in-Concert technology, you can simultaneously edit the board, the package, and the die. The interactive routing commands are smart enough to figure out if you are editing a package, a board, or an IC and adapt its behavior according to the object being edited. This is obviously completely transparent to all and adapts from one tab (package) to the other (IC).

To edit or create a package in Virtuoso RF solution, you need to have a Package PDK. The following blogs very well explain how to get this done:

• Virtuoso Meets Maxwell: Package PDK in Virtuoso! How Is it even possible!? (Part 1)
• Virtuoso Meets Maxwell: Package PDK in Virtuoso! How Is It Even Possible? (Part 2)

To see a related video with more information, click Routing a Package. You can also find this video in the Video Library section on the Cadence Support portal.

Related Resources

• Virtuoso RF Solution
• What’s New in Virtuoso (ICADVM18.1 Only)
• Virtuoso RF Solution Guide
• Pushing and Shoving in interactive routing

For more information on Cadence circuit design products and services, visit www.cadence.com.

About Virtuoso Meets Maxwell

Virtuoso Meets Maxwell series includes posts about the next-generation die, package, and board design flow with a focus on reinventing and optimizing the design process to ensure that the designer remains a designer! Keep watching!

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