Routing Vccint on four-layer PCB

That works. Cut a square in the power plane, under the chip, and insert a smaller square of Vccint, so you can bring two supplies into the chip on each layer. Then you can route a fat trace in to power the inner island, with a few bypass caps, maybe on the backside of the board.

John

OK, that's what I'll do.

If I was using a Spartan-3 or Spartan-3E, which also require a Vccaux of 2.5V, would it be reasonable to do the same thing to the ground plane under the chip?

Thanks! Eric

Ground planes are usually sacred, and it potentially complicates bypassing if there's no ground plane all under the chip.

You could probably get away with it, the ground cutout thing for Vccaux. I've seen a lot of strange fpga power connection schemes, and they all worked.

John

I would agree on the ground layer always because it is common to all power rails. We do have a product on 4 layers that has 7 power segments(4 Vccio, 1.2V, 2.5V and 3.3V) under the FPGA and so far with many hundreds of them in the field with many different customers no reports of power related issues. I will say we did a lot of work to make all of the power segments as good as we could using a number of techniques that we use frequently. The product in question is here

On this product we targetted 4 layers because we wanted to make a price target and 6 layers does cost more if only by a few dollars or the equivalent. If you are doing small numbers then PCB tooling may be of significance and that will be dearer on 6 layers than 4 layers. Standard lead times will also be greater on 6 layers than 4 usually

John Adair Enterpo> >

Eric

Four layers is trivial.

Layer stack is

Signal gnd

Use sot23 style linear regs for 1v2 and 2v5 (for the 3e) and place them on the underside, within the FPGA. Then use the two signal layers to pour 1v2 and 2v5 to the fpga. The only limitation (for the 3e) is that all signals have to exit outwards from the FPGA.

Colin

Hi Eric, I'd keep the ground plane intact and hack up the 'power' plane a bit more. I reason that it's much harder to c*ck up a PCB design with an intact ground plane! HTH., Syms.

I just assembled a 4-layer board with a EP2C8 (Cyclone II) in QFP. The stackup is sig/gnd/3.3/sig. The 1.2V core regulator is derived from the 3.3V and is near one corner of the FPGA. A very fat trace on the component side runs under the chip at the corner and forms a "Y" shape close to the inside perimeter of the pads. The Vccint is a little asymmetrical so that still leaves another corner open if you need it. I made the 1.2V PLL voltages (at the entry corner and the opposite corner) with cap+bead+cap. There's actually lots of room on the bottom, it's just a bunch of caps under the chip.

Like others have said, it's best not to mess with the ground plane. I have a four-layer S3E VQ100 board (1.2/2.5/3.3) that's somewhat ugly inside, but it works. Just divvy the power plane as best you can and run fat traces to the other pins.

-Mike