SPROUT—Smart Power Routing Tool for Board-Level Exploration and Prototyping

The board-level power network design process is governed by system-level parameters, such as the number of layers and the ball grid array (BGA) pattern. These parameters influence the characteristics of the resulting system, such as power, speed, and cost. Evaluating the impact of these parameters is however challenging. To estimate the reduction in impedance if, for example, additional BGA balls are dedicated to the power delivery system, adjustments to the board layout, and an additional impedance extraction process are required. These processes are poorly automated, requiring significant time and labor. Automating power network exploration and prototyping can greatly enhance the board-level power delivery design process by increasing the number of possible design options. With power network exploration and prototyping, the effects of the system parameters on the electrical characteristics can be better understood, providing valuable insight into the early stages of the design process. SPROUT—an automated algorithm for prototyping printed circuit board (PCB) power networks—is presented here. This tool includes the first fully automated algorithm for board-level power network layout synthesis. Two board-level industrial power networks are synthesized using SPROUT. The impedance of the resulting layouts exhibits good agreement with manual PCB layouts while significantly reducing the design time. The tool is used to explore area/impedance tradeoffs in a three-rail system, providing useful data to enhance the PCB design process.