Thanks! I just spent a most-productive 30 minutes this morning learning about BGA PCB design tips! Your video tutorials are well-organized, have such a smooth flow, and are packed with a tera-ton of helpful info! You are really good at this stuff!
@@PhilsLab it's truly great! I think here with all the high-res layout content, it would make sense to upload the video in 1440p or even 4K as in several parts the 1080p resolution visibly degrades a lot of details like trace edges and so on.
A fallacy I have always found with PCB design is that you can zoom in like 3000% in your EDA software, and then clearances and pads all look huge. And then you get the board manufactured (or do it yourself for simple stuff), and everything is actually very tiny. Same with CAD and 3D printing. Zooming in like an electron microscope, doing 0.2mm radius chamfers on tiny parts, and then realizing that even a resin printer will have trouble reproducing that.
I find useful to have a familiar package size on your PCB design and on your desk while designing. Always keep looking at both when laying out and setting up rules.
One thing I love is when manufacturers actually make the BGA layout easier to route, and an extreme example I had recently was the SAMA7G54. Selectively depopulated balls and intelligent pin placement allows for some impressive routing, such an being able to route an entire DDR3 interface without vias. If you haven't checked it out yet I'd recommend taking a look at the datasheet as well as the Altium project provided with the EVK documents.
I would love to see you do a long form project from start to finish. I'm a senior Computer Engineering student attempting to embed computer vision models onto a Zynq Ultrascale+. If you made a video walking us through an idea, design, build, and test of a product or device, that would be an amazing video! I want to see you use what you build!
Thanks for unlocking this mystery to me. I have always avoided BGA as it seemed almost unobtanium design-wise. Now I have some confidence :) Thank you for the tips!
Not sure about the "more reliable" point. I've seen a lot of failures due to BGAs that run hot and eventually with thermal cycling the connections break. Of course "compared to what" might be asked, if there are >>200 pins. Useful video, as always!
The production quality of the board is so nice! Really beautifully done job! I'm so stoked for the course. I just wanted to ask about the progress on the advanced hardware design course and if you are planning to make this board open source. Thanks again phil
One more question for you - have you tried yet new JLCPCB's via-in-a-pad process yet? It should theoretically allow avoiding 0201 caps for a 1mm pitch BGAs (I use Xilinx/AMD 7 series FPGAs a lot and most of them have 1 mm pitch), and instead use 0402 and place pads right on top of vias. Since I assemble my PCBs myself by manually placing parts and reflowing them in an oven, 0201 decoupling caps are a quite annoying to place manually even under 10x stereo microscope, so it I can replace them with 0402s with via-in-a-pad, that would be a major win for me! If you have tried, I would greatly appreciate if you would make an end-to-end video on it - from footprint design to soldering, as I've never used that tech before, but it looks super-promising to me.
In 0.4 pitch I forced to use 0.15/0.25 vias under pads, some manufacturers do it. As I found out, blind vias is most expensive tech (I got 500$ for 10 pcb), so better use 0.15/0.25 (I got 150$ for 10 pcb).
Nice video Phil! For beginners like me this is a helpful video, because BGA’s look like magic for the untrained hobbyist. As always very clear speech and very information-dense without getting dull. Its good to know pcbway can handle 0.5mm pitch BGA’s, because jlcpcb can’t. Question: I see you use big sized caps a lot, instead of smaller ones like 0603 etc. I wonder why, because the smaller ones a lot of times also have big enough capacitance? What do I miss?
Thank you, Remy! The caps on this specific board often had very large capacitances for ceramics - e.g. 100uF per part, which is only available in larger packages. Also, voltage rating is usually higher and thus less derating for larger parts.
I am happy that I found another guy that explains some layout tips, not only Robert Feranec (who is also great). I found Your videos more structured. I also liked many things in your silkscreen, that makes it easy for software guy to understand what is going on, so less stupid questions comes to bother me.
Thanks for watching! Most STM32s I'm afraid use a 0.5mm pitch BGA, which is a PITA. However, if you can find a BGA176+25 package (201 pins total), those are 0.65mm and a lot more forgiving when it comes to layout/routing.
Exactly the topic I was hoping for. Great work as always Philip. Also, couldn't help but notice Banana Schplit USB C PD on the project bar😏 Looking forward to that video.
I once again thank you for this video Phill! Although i live in a country where the currency is not worth that much, I am expected to get a significant raise I'm my job (which in part is due to some of your videos), I hope to buy some of your courses :) Thank you for the content you provide, you are making a significant change to a lot of people!
Hi Philip, It was a great video which I was searching for a upcoming research project. your video content is pretty concise and wish to be a designer like you. good luck 😍
I love BGAs with reasonable ball pitches (say 0.65 mm and up) as they allow for super-compact designs! A question for you - do you have an AD sources published for this design anywhere? I love seeing how others do layouts, as it might give me some ideas for my own future designs.
I agree, 0.65mm is right on the rdge what is still manufacturable with 'standard' PCBA and great for compact designs. This board will be part of an upcoming course, but I'll most likely be making the design open-source. Will make a video on it when the board is ready!
At 23:10, would a good alternative be to remove a pad for an unused pin and route the trace as if there were no obstacles? I don't think a ball that's not connected to anything should cause any problems, and since the trace underneath is coated, it's properly isolated from it.
Hmm that seems to be all quite large from a distance point of view I have now pads with 0.09mm distance so most of the pcb traces can't get routed directly I always have to via out.
Thanks for the video - really useful tips and timely! I'm working on a PCB where I need to make use of a tiny WLCSP 20-pad (1.63mm x 2.03mm) NXP MCU - really simple but it's a 0.4mm pitch IC! Any tips on routing out the inner 6 pads? At the moment the plan is to do 0.15mm drill vias in pad on a four layer PCB. I've managed to solder it by hand ok, but just want to make sure that it's also ready for automated assembly.
What about plugged vias under the bga pads? Not sure with pcbway, but at least jlcpcb supports plugged vias, and on 4+ layers, the specs seems to be pretty good in regards, of limitations. But I have no experience with this. Is better to only use plugged vias if you really don't have more space for dog-bone via routing? Or is it ok to use plugged vias for f.ex. all the power pins. And route all signals using dog-bone vias?
Thanks for watching! I have a video or two covering those topics in a bit of detail (see the FPGA/Zynq vids). This'll be covered in-depth in the upcoming course however.
I see you are still using old-school 45° angle traces. I've been pushing myself into using rounded and any-angle traces lately, and the more I use them, the more I like them.
Hi Phil, is it possible to mask off an unused BGA pin and route under it or should all of the pins on an IC be soldered to the board? Does the soldering process run into issues if not all pins have subsequent pads to stick to?
Hi Stefan, Yeah, I've done that a couple times myself actually. It's generally not recommended to rely on soldermask as an insulator, so I'd only do that if the balls/pads I'm 'omitting' are NC pads anyway. Haven't had problems w.r.t. soldering process, but then again I've always only omitted maybe 1 or 2 balls from a 100+ ball BGA.
Thanks! I just spent a most-productive 30 minutes this morning learning about BGA PCB design tips! Your video tutorials are well-organized, have such a smooth flow, and are packed with a tera-ton of helpful info! You are really good at this stuff!
Thank you very much for your kind comment!
@@PhilsLab it's truly great! I think here with all the high-res layout content, it would make sense to upload the video in 1440p or even 4K as in several parts the 1080p resolution visibly degrades a lot of details like trace edges and so on.
A fallacy I have always found with PCB design is that you can zoom in like 3000% in your EDA software, and then clearances and pads all look huge. And then you get the board manufactured (or do it yourself for simple stuff), and everything is actually very tiny. Same with CAD and 3D printing. Zooming in like an electron microscope, doing 0.2mm radius chamfers on tiny parts, and then realizing that even a resin printer will have trouble reproducing that.
I find useful to have a familiar package size on your PCB design and on your desk while designing. Always keep looking at both when laying out and setting up rules.
One thing I love is when manufacturers actually make the BGA layout easier to route, and an extreme example I had recently was the SAMA7G54. Selectively depopulated balls and intelligent pin placement allows for some impressive routing, such an being able to route an entire DDR3 interface without vias.
If you haven't checked it out yet I'd recommend taking a look at the datasheet as well as the Altium project provided with the EVK documents.
Fantastic. I’ve been an advanced user for decades but this bga guide for small pitch was very valuable. I didn’t know about using unused balls.
Thanks, glad it was useful!
Your videos make me believe PCB designing is an art more then a science
I would love to see you do a long form project from start to finish. I'm a senior Computer Engineering student attempting to embed computer vision models onto a Zynq Ultrascale+. If you made a video walking us through an idea, design, build, and test of a product or device, that would be an amazing video! I want to see you use what you build!
Truly one of the best channels out there for electronics and design overall, thank you again for releasing such great content Phil!
Thank you very much!
Thanks for unlocking this mystery to me. I have always avoided BGA as it seemed almost unobtanium design-wise. Now I have some confidence :) Thank you for the tips!
Not sure about the "more reliable" point. I've seen a lot of failures due to BGAs that run hot and eventually with thermal cycling the connections break. Of course "compared to what" might be asked, if there are >>200 pins. Useful video, as always!
Couldn't have been more perfect timing of posting! I'm working on an Artix PCB and am about to do fanout.
Awesome, good luck with your Artix design!
The timing of your videos is creepily awesome lol
Glad to hear that :D
I literally thought of dropping a comment on your videos to make you do this video. Then thought you won't notice. Thank you for doing this
I actually read every single comment on YT - although replying to all would take a bit too long!
There is most likely BGA in the near future for me. Thank you for yet another list of great tips.
Thanks for watching, Biko!
It just feels so nice to have via in pad manufacturing, which at least cut half of the hassles mentioned in this video.
The production quality of the board is so nice! Really beautifully done job! I'm so stoked for the course. I just wanted to ask about the progress on the advanced hardware design course and if you are planning to make this board open source. Thanks again phil
One more question for you - have you tried yet new JLCPCB's via-in-a-pad process yet? It should theoretically allow avoiding 0201 caps for a 1mm pitch BGAs (I use Xilinx/AMD 7 series FPGAs a lot and most of them have 1 mm pitch), and instead use 0402 and place pads right on top of vias. Since I assemble my PCBs myself by manually placing parts and reflowing them in an oven, 0201 decoupling caps are a quite annoying to place manually even under 10x stereo microscope, so it I can replace them with 0402s with via-in-a-pad, that would be a major win for me! If you have tried, I would greatly appreciate if you would make an end-to-end video on it - from footprint design to soldering, as I've never used that tech before, but it looks super-promising to me.
From the SI point of view 0201 caps are sometimes a necessity
In 0.4 pitch I forced to use 0.15/0.25 vias under pads, some manufacturers do it. As I found out, blind vias is most expensive tech (I got 500$ for 10 pcb), so better use 0.15/0.25 (I got 150$ for 10 pcb).
Nice video Phil! For beginners like me this is a helpful video, because BGA’s look like magic for the untrained hobbyist. As always very clear speech and very information-dense without getting dull.
Its good to know pcbway can handle 0.5mm pitch BGA’s, because jlcpcb can’t.
Question: I see you use big sized caps a lot, instead of smaller ones like 0603 etc. I wonder why, because the smaller ones a lot of times also have big enough capacitance? What do I miss?
Thank you, Remy!
The caps on this specific board often had very large capacitances for ceramics - e.g. 100uF per part, which is only available in larger packages. Also, voltage rating is usually higher and thus less derating for larger parts.
Thanks man, this was exactly what I was searching!!
It would be really helpful if you had the key binds you’re pressing show up on screen
I am happy that I found another guy that explains some layout tips, not only Robert Feranec (who is also great). I found Your videos more structured. I also liked many things in your silkscreen, that makes it easy for software guy to understand what is going on, so less stupid questions comes to bother me.
Thank you very much!
Thanks for an amazing video. I am intimidated by BGA footprints. I came across an STM32 with BGA footprint. I might try designing one with that MCU
Thanks for watching! Most STM32s I'm afraid use a 0.5mm pitch BGA, which is a PITA. However, if you can find a BGA176+25 package (201 pins total), those are 0.65mm and a lot more forgiving when it comes to layout/routing.
Exactly the topic I was hoping for. Great work as always Philip.
Also, couldn't help but notice Banana Schplit USB C PD on the project bar😏 Looking forward to that video.
Thank you, glad to hear that!
Good spot - just received the boards yesterday :)
This is a gem 💎 on YT
Thank you!
Thanks, Phil! a great person from whom I learned a lot of things in each video
Very good tips. Short and sweet with lot of information...
I once again thank you for this video Phill!
Although i live in a country where the currency is not worth that much, I am expected to get a significant raise I'm my job (which in part is due to some of your videos), I hope to buy some of your courses :)
Thank you for the content you provide, you are making a significant change to a lot of people!
Awesome tips! Looking forward to the next video 🥳
Thank you, Alejandro!
Hi Philip, It was a great video which I was searching for a upcoming research project. your video content is pretty concise and wish to be a designer like you. good luck 😍
Thank you, Moshiur - good luck with your project!
Nice very important sunject!!! Great video
Thanks, Tony!
I love BGAs with reasonable ball pitches (say 0.65 mm and up) as they allow for super-compact designs!
A question for you - do you have an AD sources published for this design anywhere? I love seeing how others do layouts, as it might give me some ideas for my own future designs.
I agree, 0.65mm is right on the rdge what is still manufacturable with 'standard' PCBA and great for compact designs.
This board will be part of an upcoming course, but I'll most likely be making the design open-source. Will make a video on it when the board is ready!
Hey Phil, Thanks for your informative videos.
Can you inform when your new course be available?
Do you need to add ground via when you changing layers whenever you have room or its not important with BGA?
Hello,
Thanks for your videos
I want to ask you if you have any full cours about BGA pcb design .
Hi, Phil! Do you consider start a FPGA programming course?
Can't wait to see it!
I wanted to ask you about this topic in comments when you upload the next video 😁.. thanks phils!
Glad to hear this is the topic you were looking for, hope it's useful!
Impressive overview!
At 23:10, would a good alternative be to remove a pad for an unused pin and route the trace as if there were no obstacles? I don't think a ball that's not connected to anything should cause any problems, and since the trace underneath is coated, it's properly isolated from it.
Thanks for your excellent videos!
Really like the video, as always very informative. But now I really want to know the the Zettbrett is all about and where I can get one.
Thanks! Once I've done board bring-up, I'd like to make a video on the design/use and put them on Tindie.
Hmm that seems to be all quite large from a distance point of view I have now pads with 0.09mm distance so most of the pcb traces can't get routed directly I always have to via out.
Hi Phil, thanks a lot for your video!
In video you say that project is open. Where I can download source project of altium?
Thanks for the video - really useful tips and timely! I'm working on a PCB where I need to make use of a tiny WLCSP 20-pad (1.63mm x 2.03mm) NXP MCU - really simple but it's a 0.4mm pitch IC!
Any tips on routing out the inner 6 pads? At the moment the plan is to do 0.15mm drill vias in pad on a four layer PCB.
I've managed to solder it by hand ok, but just want to make sure that it's also ready for automated assembly.
great video Phil, thanks a lot
Thank you!
Great and helpful video!!! Are you using blind and or buried vias for this board?
What about plugged vias under the bga pads? Not sure with pcbway, but at least jlcpcb supports plugged vias, and on 4+ layers, the specs seems to be pretty good in regards, of limitations. But I have no experience with this. Is better to only use plugged vias if you really don't have more space for dog-bone via routing? Or is it ok to use plugged vias for f.ex. all the power pins. And route all signals using dog-bone vias?
Thanks for knowledge-rich video . Can you make a video explaining DDR3L, QSPI , EMMC and ZYNQ
Thanks for watching! I have a video or two covering those topics in a bit of detail (see the FPGA/Zynq vids). This'll be covered in-depth in the upcoming course however.
@@PhilsLab Thank you
@@PhilsLab
When exactly is this course coming...?
I see you are still using old-school 45° angle traces. I've been pushing myself into using rounded and any-angle traces lately, and the more I use them, the more I like them.
I occassionally use them but find them a bit irritating when having to adjust them during design. Maybe I haven't found the right method in AD.
@asmi06 I thought the advantage was little.
@@remy- Less Bremsstrahlung from the electrons not having to change direction that quickly?
Thank you for another full of information video. I got a crazy question, can you put a via directly on BGA pad?
I think in theory you could, but filled. And I guess that’s the problem for small via’s.
You can but you'll need to fill and cap those vias, which will add - usually, significant - cost. I'd only do that if I really have a good reason.
Abs gemm of a video!!
Really good video!
Thanks!
Hi Phil, is it possible to mask off an unused BGA pin and route under it or should all of the pins on an IC be soldered to the board? Does the soldering process run into issues if not all pins have subsequent pads to stick to?
Hi Stefan, Yeah, I've done that a couple times myself actually. It's generally not recommended to rely on soldermask as an insulator, so I'd only do that if the balls/pads I'm 'omitting' are NC pads anyway.
Haven't had problems w.r.t. soldering process, but then again I've always only omitted maybe 1 or 2 balls from a 100+ ball BGA.
@@PhilsLab Amazing! Thank you for the reply! Keep up the great videos, your presentation is straight forward and video quality amazing!
Holy crap wow that’s expensive 0_0 wish it was cheaper!!
🤯 👏
1:29 better longevity? **cries in YLOD**
How much this board?
Yes.