Fan-out wafer-level packaging (FOWLP) is changing into a essential expertise in superior semiconductor packaging, marking a major shift in system integration methods. Trade analyses present 3D IC and superior packaging make up greater than 45% of the IC packaging market worth, underscoring the transfer to extra refined options.
The challenges are important—from thermal administration and testing to the necessity for higher automation and cross-domain experience—however the potential advantages when it comes to efficiency, energy effectivity, and integration density make these challenges value addressing.
Determine 1 3D IC and superior packaging make up greater than 45% of the IC packaging market worth. Supply: Siemens EDA
This text explores the automation frameworks wanted for profitable FOWLP design and focuses on core design processes and efficient cross-functional collaboration.
Understanding FOWLP expertise
FOWLP is a sophisticated packaging technique that integrates a number of dies from totally different course of nodes right into a compact system. By eliminating substrates and utilizing wafer-level batch processing, FOWLP can scale back value and enhance yield. As a result of it shortens interconnect lengths, FOWLP packages supply decrease sign delays and energy consumption in comparison with standard strategies. They’re additionally thinner, making them superb for space-constrained units equivalent to smartphones.
One other key profit is assist for superior stacking, equivalent to putting DRAM above a processor. As designs grow to be extra advanced, this allows greater efficiency whereas sustaining manageable kind elements. FOWLP additionally helps heterogeneous integration, accommodating a wide selection of die combos to go well with software wants.
The necessity for automation in FOWLP design
Designing with FOWLP exceeds the capabilities of conventional PCB design strategies. Two primary challenges drive the necessity for automation: the inherent complexity of FOWLP and the dimensions of recent layouts, racking up tens of millions of pins and tens of hundreds of nets. Handbook methods can not reliably handle this complexity and scale, rising the chance of errors and inefficiency.
Adopting automation isn’t merely about dashing up handbook duties. It requires a whole change in how design groups strategy advanced packaging design and collaborate throughout disciplines. Let’s take a look at a number of of the salient methods to make this transformation profitable.
- Know-how setup
All FOWLP designs begin with an intensive expertise setup. Course of design kits (PDKs) from foundries specify layer constraints, by way of spans, and spacing guidelines. Integrating these foundry-specific guidelines into the design surroundings ensures each downstream step follows business necessities.
Automation frameworks should interpret and apply these guidelines persistently all through the design. Success right here relies on shut consideration to element and a deep understanding of each the foundry’s expectations and the capabilities of the design instruments.
- Meeting and ground planning
Throughout meeting and ground planning, designers set up the bodily relationships between dies and different elements. This section should account for thermal and mechanical stress from the beginning. Automation makes it sensible to include early thermal evaluation and flag potential points earlier than fabrication.
Efficient design partitioning can be essential when working with automated layouts. Automated classification and grouping of nets enable customized routing methods. That is particularly vital for high-speed die-to-die interfaces, in comparison with much less essential utility indicators. The framework ought to distinguish between these and apply appropriate methodologies.
- Fan-out and routing
Fan-out and routing are among the many most technically difficult components of FOWLP design. The automation system should assist superior energy distribution networks equivalent to regional energy islands, floodplains, or striping. For sign routing, the system must handle many constraints directly, together with routing lengths, routing targets, and dealing with differential pairs.
Automated sequence administration is important, enabling designers to iterate and refine routing as necessities evolve. Having the ability to regulate routing priorities dynamically helps meet electrical and bodily design constraints.
- Last verification and ending
The final design section is verification and ending. Right here, automation techniques deal with degassing gap patterns, verifying stress and density necessities, and integrating dummy metallic fills. Getting ready knowledge for GDS or OASIS output is streamlined, guaranteeing the ultimate bundle meets manufacturing and reliability requirements.
Constructing profitable automated workflows
For FOWLP automation flows to succeed, frameworks should stability technical energy with ease of use. Specialists ought to be capable to concentrate on their self-discipline without having deep programming expertise. Automated instructions ought to have clear, self-explanatory names, and simple choices.
Efficient frameworks promote collaboration amongst bundle designers, structure specialists, sign and energy integrity analysts, and thermal and mechanical engineers. Sharing a typical design surroundings helps groups work collectively and apply their expertise the place they’re most useful.
An important position in FOWLP design automation is the replay coordinator. This particular person orchestrates your complete workflow, managing contributions from all group members in addition to the sequence and dependencies of automated duties, guaranteeing that each one the varied design steps are correctly sequenced and executed.
To be efficient, replay coordinators want a high-level understanding of the general course of and powerful communication with the group. They’re liable for decoding evaluation outcomes, coordinating changes, and driving the group towards optimum design outcomes.
The instruments of the brand new commerce
This profitable shift in how we strategy microarchitectural design requires new instruments and applied sciences that assist the transition from 2D to 3D ICs. Siemens EDA’s Innovator3D IC is a unified cockpit for design planning, prototyping, and predictive evaluation of two.5/3D heterogeneous built-in units.
Innovator3D IC constructs a digital twin, unified knowledge mannequin of the whole semiconductor bundle meeting. By utilizing system expertise co-optimization, Innovator3D IC permits designers to fulfill their energy, efficiency, space, and price targets.
Determine 2 Innovator3D IC includes a unified cockpit. Supply: Siemens EDA
FOWLP marks a basic evolution in semiconductor packaging. The way forward for semiconductor packaging lies within the capability to stability technological sophistication with sensible implementation. Success with this expertise depends on automation frameworks that make advanced designs sensible whereas enabling efficient teamwork.
As business continues to progress, organizations with sturdy FOWLP automation methods can have a aggressive benefit in delivering superior merchandise and driving the subsequent wave of semiconductor innovation.
Todd Burkholder is a Senior Editor at Siemens DISW. For over 25 years, he has labored as editor, writer, and ghost author with inside and exterior prospects to create print and digital content material throughout a broad vary of EDA applied sciences. Todd started his profession in advertising for high-technology and different industries in 1992 after incomes a Bachelor of Science at Portland State College and a Grasp of Science diploma from the College of Arizona.
Chris Cone is an IC packaging product advertising supervisor at Siemens EDA with a various technical background spanning each design engineering and EDA instruments. His distinctive mixture of hands-on design expertise and deep data of EDA instruments supplies him with invaluable insights into the challenges and alternatives of recent semiconductor packaging, notably in automated workflows for FOWLP.
Editor’s Notes
That is third and remaining a part of the article collection on 3D IC. The first half supplied important context and sensible depth for design engineers engaged on 3D IC techniques. The second half highlighted 3D IC design toolkits and workflows to exhibit how the mixing expertise works.
Associated Content material
- 3D IC Design
- Thermal evaluation software goals to reinvigorate 3D-IC design
- Heterogeneous Integration and the Evolution of IC Packaging
- Tighter Integration Between Course of Applied sciences and Packaging
- Superior IC Packaging: The Roadmap to 3D IC Semiconductor Scaling
The publish Automating FOWLP design: A complete framework for next-generation integration appeared first on EDN.
