This thread might do well in comp.arch.fpga. There are several FAEs there who love digging into just this sort of issue.
I have crossposted there.
This thread might do well in comp.arch.fpga. There are several FAEs there who love digging into just this sort of issue.
I have crossposted there.
-- Rick "rickman" Collins rick.collins@XYarius.com Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY removed. Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com 4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX
Xpost 2 cae and caf, no Fup.
Hallo,
"Geoffrey Mortimer" wrote:
Actually that's a very hot topic as BGA seems to get usual in the world of FPGAs and ASICs. I know that our mechanical engineers allready research on this topic, as we are very likely to have some fine pitch BGA in a high vibration environment in future. I would guess, that you should ask in some mechanical newsgroups as well. A big problem using FBGA is the test, wether you connected all balls proberly [1], as you have no chance of easy visual inspection.
bye Thomas
[1] in a mechanical aspect. Of course you get a quick answer if one IO has no electrical connection.-- Don't answer to the email in from, use thomas[at] for PM.
I recently saw a product that allows visual inspection of the solder balls on a mounted BGA. It is a fiber optic microscope and has tiny fiber probes that can run between the balls. I'll look for the info if anyone is interested.
-- Rick "rickman" Collins rick.collins@XYarius.com Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY removed. Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com 4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX
Followup to: By author: rickman In newsgroup: comp.arch.fpga
A lot of people seem to do X-ray inspection, which I guess could be considered "visual" in some way.
-hpa
-- at work, in private! If you send me mail in HTML format I will assume it's spam. "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." Architectures needed: ia64 m68k mips64 ppc ppc64 s390 s390x sh v850 x86-64
Rick,
I'd certainly be interested in more info on the fiber microscope you mentioned. Debugging designs with lots of big BGAs is tough enough without wondering whether it's an assembly issue or not, and traditional xray techniques are good for showing shorts, but no so good for opens ...
----- R> >
high
There's also JTAG tools that can read and write arbitrary values to I/O pins. Roughly $1K for benchtop systems, $10K for a production tester. If the BGA is hooked to other chips with JTAG, you can make a rather complete test.
And of course there's traditional bed-of-nails, not used much due to cost of implementing on proto hardware.
Dave Kinsell
Sorry I did not get back to you sooner. The original contact was ASG at
With a google search I found this -
R>
-- Rick "rickman" Collins rick.collins@XYarius.com Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY removed. Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com 4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX
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