Ease Your IC Packaging Documentation and Manufacturing Exports for Stacked Dies in 16.6 SiP

Following our last posting concerning intelligent documentation text, this week we look at the a new ability in 16.6 for managing the die outlines in a manner which allows simplified generation of documentation and manufacturing outputs.

In a complex IC package substrate, all die components may not be placed directly on the top or bottom substrate surfaces. Instead, they are frequently placed on top of other die components, resulting in a vertical die stack.

Most manufacturing and documentation outputs -- whether in GDSII, DXF, Artwork, or PDF format -- are based on layers or sets of layers grouped into films. Prior to Allegro SiP 16.6, since all the components in a die stack had their outline on the same place bound layer, separating the different layers of the vertical stack involved error-prone manual manipulation of the design or copying of shapes from one layer to another.

But, by moving to the 16.6 release of Cadence SiP Layout, you can access exciting new capabilities to automatically manage unique layers for each die's outline in your design. To learn how this makes your life easier and removes the potential for errors in your flows, read on!

Enabling and Leveraging Unique Die Outline Layers

In 16.6, you have the option to have the tool automatically manage unique outline layers for every die in your design. As seen in the image below, you can choose between three options: none, filled, or unfilled.

 

In filled or unfilled mode, whenever you add a die to the design, a unique layer will be created on the COMPONENT_GEOMETRY class with a name matching the reference designator of the die. The die's outline will be shown here. As an added bonus, if you rename, delete, resize, move, or otherwise modify the die, the outline on this layer will automatically reflect those changes.

Each dynamically-managed layer may now have a separate color and visibility state to better meet your display requirements during the substrate design process. When it comes time to generate your manufacturing and documentation outputs, reference each layer separately to create the exact organization of the output that you want. Place multiple dies in the same film, each die in its own, or even leave some dies out of the output entirely, if they represent variant dies and are not accurate in the current variation of the package.

 

Upgrade to 16.6 today to speed your design flow to create more accurate documentation data. If you have a comment or suggestion for improving your productivity, we'd love to hear from you!

Jeff Gallagher