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This week introduced OrbitIO Planner, a tool for dynamic I/O planning across IC, package, and PCB (printed-circuit-board) design. To date, the company has offered tools for IC, package and PCB power and signal-integrity analysis and packaging-design tools it acquired from Synopsys. Now, the company is offering a tool to help I/O designers get an upfront estimate of how their IC layouts will affect pin placement in the package and, ultimately, the targeted PCB.

According to Jiayuan Fang, president of Sigrity, designers changing the I/O in an IC layout traditionally have had to also implement the change in the package and PCB layouts. But these three disciplines have become separate; thus, propagating changes and weighing the impact of changes across all three have been difficult and time-consuming. OrbitIO Planner aims to solve this problem. The tool employs a single data model that connects IC-, package-, and PCB-layout environments and allows users to make real-time evaluations and do what-if explorations of I/O assignment and connectivity options.

Users feed the tool LEF (layout-exchange-format) and DEF (design-exchange-format) files from IC-layout environments, input data from Sigrity or Cadence package-layout tools, and input data from PCB-layout tools. “The tool tries to find the best location for I/O cells and the best net assignments for the pads and balls on the package to minimize the number of interconnection layers and crossover of the interconnects,” says Fang. Once users have derived an I/O plan, they can use the tool to feed the I/O data back to the PCB and IC tools in their native formats.

OrbitIO Planner includes features to help designers monitor I/O hierarchy and relationships. The three disciplines often use different syntax and naming conventions to describe nets, so with OrbitIO, Sigrity has included a feature to help users manage syntactical differences in net names among domains, including scenarios of one-to-many or many-to-one net mapping. OrbitIO Planner supports multiple package types, including SIP (system in package) and POP (package on package). It also supports wire-bond, flip-chip, surface-mount, and mixed-die-attachment methods. Beta customers are currently using OrbitIO Planner, and Sigrity expects to have the product ready for the mass market in the third quarter of 2007 at a starting price of $58,000 for a one-year subscription.