Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1369942
MAY 2021 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 67 of space limitations within the system, the cir- cuit board contour is round with a 70.5-mm diameter. On this small disk, 550 components with 2,838 pins must be placed on both sides. To route this many components, which con- sists of a mixture of fine pitch active devices (ball grid array down to 0.5-mm pitch) and small passives (down to 0201 package size), a high-density board (HDI) construction was mandatory. Figure 1 shows the placement of the com- ponents and the board construction, an eight- layer core with one sequential buildup layer on each side. Blind vias provide the connection from top and bottom layers to the core; buried vias connect the inner layers within the core. We then validated the PCB design against a DFM profile before sending the data out to a PCB supplier. We uploaded the design, which was saved as an ODB++ compressed file, and then selected a DFM profile of a preferred PCB manufacturer. e manufacturer dashboard displays the company and location as well as the name and status of the DFM profile. Pro- files with the status "public" are available to all users. Profiles with the status "limited" belong to companies that we are connected to within the network. e next step was to click the RUN DFM button to start the analysis process. Once the DFM analysis progress bar reached 100%, the DFM report was presented automatically. e complete analysis for this complex HDI board took only 90 seconds. e DFM report shown in Figure 2 is interactive and allows filtering as well as scrolling options. e DFM report Figure 2: DFM report with information pane (left) and analysis results per layer (right).