A Comprehensive Design Flow for IC and Packaging for a 28GHz WiFi System

The design effort for upcoming integrated circuit and package technologies is rising because of increasing complexity. To achieve required specification values with a good trade-off of system size, current consumption, performance and costs, it is necessary to have a design flow, that enable comprehensive optimization across all components of a system. This presentation covers a system consisting of an IC manufactured in a SOI technology and an advanced packaging substrate. Both designs have been implemented within Cadence tooling. In this case Cadence Virtuoso is used for the IC and Cadence Allegro is used for the package design. To enable shifting of components from IC to package or vice versa, a tool flow was used, that enables annotation between both design tools. Using analysis tools like EMX or Clarity different variants of implementation across IC and package have been investigated and been analyzed to choose for the best solution. The system is currently in production and the presentation will also cover measurement results as well as an comparison of the simulation and measurement results.