Package Design for Signal Integrity

I have been doing some research into signal integrity design for electronic packages.  Basically electronic package design involves creating a container to enclose an integrated circuit (IC) or ICs to make it robust enough for attachment to a printed circuit board through a soldering process.  I view this field as important to high speed digital design because system in a package seems to have a lot of promise for increasing system performance.  In the future, digital engineers may design custom systems in package similar to the current system on a board process where multiple components are integrated together on printed circuit boards.  There are many different types of packages, but the design is cross discipline involving the following aspects:

• electrical schematic level design to create a netlist for routing (especially for system in a package designs with multiple dies in a single package)
• electrical design or power distribution and interconnections (signal integrity concerns)
• thermal design (making sure the heat generated by the IC(s) can be dissipated and temperatures kept below critical maximum die temperatures
• mechanical design of package structures to ensure stresses and strains in the assembly process and during normal operation do not cause device failure
• materials design (choosing materials that meet the requirements of performance, reliability, and regulations)
• PCB cad design (layout and routing of the ICs inside the package to create engineering drawings to be used in the fabrication of the package)
  

A package design group would require all of these skills, as well as tight integration with the package assembly process.

Tool Vendors

These are some tools that I came across in my research that seem appropriate for the electrical design aspects of package design.  Some of these vendors may also provide thermal and mechanical tools for use in package design as well.  Please respond to this post with any other tools that I missed, as I'm sure the list is not exhaustive.

Apache Design Solutions - PakSi-E - This tool does 3D field solution for package designs.
Supports extraction from Cadence Allegro, Encore BGA, Mentor Graphics MCM Station, and Zuken CR-5000.
Output results are RLGC matrices,  spice subcircuits, whole package IBIS models, w-element models, SDF delay models, SI parameters (S, Y, Z, crosstalk ratio, etc.), as well as current density and voltage drop for power and ground pins.

Sigrity - CoDesign Studio - Tools including Speed 2000, XcitePI, and PowerSI for doing package and IC codesign.

Cadence Allegro Package SI - Tool that provides some SI interface analysis capabilities to the Cadence Allegro package design tools.  It requires an external 3D field solver engine though from a third party such as Apache.

Ansoft SI Wave - Package design tool, can be used stand alone or also with full 3D field solver HFSS from Ansoft.  Interfaces with package layout tools.

Ansys IceMax - 3D field solver for package design.  Now that Ansys owns Ansoft, I wonder what strategy they will follow with this and overlapping HFSS and SI Wave tools.

Online Webinars

Here are some online resources that I came across in my research.  Again this list is not very complete and I welcome additional suggestions.

• Chip-Package Co-Design: Applying Chip Power Model in System Power Integrity Analysis
• Towards True Co-Design: Bridging the Gap between IC and Package Design for Power Integrity

References

[1] Cole, Brad. September 23, 2008. "Signal integrity modeling tools critical to high speed IC package design."  Planet Analog.

[2] Lau, John, C.P. Wong, John L. Prince, Wataru, Nakayama. 1998. Electronic Packaging Design Materials, Process, and Reliability. McGraw-Hill: New York, NY.