Automatic router for the pin grid array package

A pin grid array (PGA) package router is described. Given a chip cavity with a number of I/O pads around its boundary and an equivalent number of pins distributed on the substrate, the objective of the router is to complete the planar interconnection of pad-to-pin nets on one or more layers. This router consists of three phases: layer assignment, topological routing and geometrical routing. Examples tested on a windows-based environment show that our router is efficient and can complete the routing task with less substrate layers. Compared to manual routing, this router has a user-friendly graphic interface and can be applied practically to industrial strength VLSI packaging. © lEE, 1999.