Make Your IC Packaging Documentation Labels Smarter with 16.6 SiP and APD

Documentation is key when completing any IC package substrate design. Without it, any number of problems can arise - from incorrect bond mapping between die pads and bond fingers to die being stacked in the wrong order. Ensuring that your documentation text labels are not only present, but are up to date and 100% accurate, is a goal of every layout designer.

The 16.6 release of Cadence SiP Layout and APD products gives every engineer reason to cheer. Text labels created with the "Display Pin Text" command in either tool now intelligently store information about what the label represents; this enables the magic of self-updating documentation labels on pins, bond fingers, BGA balls, and other objects in your design. The next time you get an ECO change request, don't fear forgetting to update those labels. A simple batch update will scan ALL your labels across the entire layout and update any that are out of date. All while retaining your custom text placement, sizing, and other information.

To learn more about how 16.6 saves you time and eliminates the possibility of inaccurate, out of date documentation text labels, read on!

The Manufacture -> Documentation -> Display Pin Text ("dpn") command is your one-stop shop for creating text labels on objects from die pads to bond fingers to BGA balls. These labels may show the finger name, net assignment, or even the BGA ball that a pin is mapped to.

Prior to 16.6, once you created a text label on an object, that text was static. If you received an ECO request, made some updates to improve anything from the number of routing layers to the bond sequencing, or simply inserted a bond finger into the pattern and thus renumbered all the fingers, it was necessary for you to manually run this command again and create new, updated text labels based on these changes.

A tedious (not to mention error-prone) process, this step could easily be missed. Now, with 16.6, you can update labels with the touch of a button. In the image below, we see the Display Pin Text command's user interface for 16.6.

If you want to update only specific objects in the case of a large design and a very minor change, select those items and press "Update selected objects" button, shown in blue. Instantly, the system scans for any changes to any labels on your selected items and updates the text contents.

For the more general purpose change, however, use the "Refresh All Labels" button, shown in red. This will update all the intelligent text labels in your design based on any changes you have made to the package layout. Leave your worries about missing a label behind and let the system do the work for you. The tools even allow you to very easily build this into flows you may use in your script. Just invoke the "dpn_update" command straight from the command line or from a script to perform this same global label update - without ever having to run the "Display Pin Text" command at all!

Upgrade to 16.6 today and take a step down the path to easier, more accurate design documentation. If you have a comment or suggestion for improving your productivity, we'd love to hear from you!

Note: For text labels to be updated, they must be created using the 16.6 tool, as pre-16.6 databases do not record the content definition for the text label for the system to be able to know whether the label is out of date.

Jeff Gallagher