| FROM
THE EDITOR
This week we take a look at the perilous world of packaging. While
the part of the FPGA beyond the pins may seem a bit unglamorous,
choosing the proper package type is a critical decision in your
design process. We help you analyze your priorities in our “Package
Deal” feature article.
We’re also getting a ton of traffic on our new jobs and
demos pages. We’ve got more new content planned for the coming
months, so stay tuned and keep your comments coming on what else
you’d like to see in FPGA Journal.
Thanks
for reading! If
there's anything we can do to make our publications more useful
to you, please let us know at: comments@fpgajournal.com
Kevin Morris – Editor
FPGA and Programmable Logic Journal
|
EVENTS
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for Altera's SOPC World 2004 Today!
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Package Deal
How to Pick the Best Wrapper for Your FPGA
Choosing an FPGA package is both simple and fun.
We have flat-pack, via-stack, timing
sometimes outa’ whack; BGA,
pin-array, tin-whisker sneak attack, lead-free, QFP, 12-layer PCB; cavity-up,
cavity-down, ceramic, plastic, heat-sink ground; flip-chip, classic DIP,
moisture-sensitive micro-chip… OK, wait. Let’s break this
down.
Package selection is one of the
most important and least understood aspects of part selection for most
FPGA designers. While the digitally inclined among us are savvy to
the subtleties of speed-grade selection and cognizant of the complexities
of LUT-counting, we tend to glaze over at mere mention of solder-balls
and thermal resistance. In that no man’s
land where logic design meets the physical world, our happy realm of
zeros and ones is invaded by terrifying creatures like materials properties,
mechanical specifications, and ambient temperatures.
You can simplify the problem significantly
if you take two important steps. First, partner with the people doing
the mechanical and board layout on your project. You’ll find
them quite friendly, and they probably paid attention in those classes
you avoided, skipped, or slept through in engineering school. The choice
of package can have an enormous impact on the cost and complexity of
their job as well as on the performance and reliability of your finished
project, so it pays to have them heavily involved from the beginning.
Second, you need to make a list of the primary considerations
in package selection and decide which ones are priorities for your design.
You can use this as a road map when you’re navigating the jargon-laden
jungle of package data sheets. When you break down your basic requirements,
choosing the package becomes almost an exercise in the obvious.
[more]
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