[SI-LIST] Re: One decoupling cap per BGA power pin?

  • From: "Ibrahim Khan" <ikhan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 12:39:57 -0500

Larry,
You are good.  That was good anology.
I like the "power distribution caps (PDC)" terminology.  However, before
throw away the old concepts, I have a question that how did the
"decoupling cap" and "bypass caps" terminology start and what they
actually meant.

Ibrahim Khan

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Smith [mailto:Larry.Smith@xxxxxxx]=20
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 12:20 PM
To: Anand.Kuriakose@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: One decoupling cap per BGA power pin?



Anand - You had a couple of good questions the other day.  I was tied up
with some other work and did not respond..

There has been a lot discussion on si-list about having one decoupling
capacitor per power pin of active devices.  The problem is that micro
processors and some ASICs have 10's or 100's of power pins and there is
no way to place a decoupling capacitor at each pin location. Actually,
the "one cap per pin" rule should have been thrown out the window when
we advanced from double sided printed circuit boards and "power trees"
to using layers in the PCB dedicated to solid (or mostly
solid) power planes.  This happened many years ago, but the old rule of
thumb (which served us nicely for a long time) has outlived it's
usefulness.

A good analogy can be made with water towers and pipes.  Back when we
had a rural economy, every farmer had his own water tower to supply the
needs of his house and farm.  This is like having one decoupling
capacitor per power pin.

But soon everybody moved to the city.  The cities placed 10 or more
water tanks up on the surrounding hills and hooked all the houses and
businesses up to the water tanks with a network of pipes.  This is like
power planes supplying power to one or more chips from 10's or 100's of
decoupling capacitors.  Once you connect the chips up to the caps with
power planes, it is impossible to determine which capacitor is supplying
current to each chip.  This would be like trying to determine which
water tank is supplying water to an individual house through a well
interconnected system of pipes.  A similar analogy can be made with
electrical power generation from public service companies and the power
grid.  From the power meter in your house, it is impossible to determine
the generation station your electricity came from, or even which state.
In California, we understand this.

The water (or power) system may be limited by the capacity of the tanks
or the capacity of the pipes.  Imagine having a dozen huge water tanks
hooked up to the city through a garden hose.  This is what you have on a
PCB if your power planes are undersized (too high of impedance, too high
of spreading inductance, thick dielectric between power planes). You
have plenty of energy stored in the decoupling capacitors but the
channel for the energy to limits the amount of power that can be
consumed by the chips.

The other extreme is to have a dozen milk cans on top of the hill hooked
up to the city through 12 inch pipes.  This would be like having very
good thin dielectric power planes (with a fair amount of embedded
capacitance) but very little stored charge to bring to the power
consumers.  The distribution system is capable of carrying an enormous
amount of water but will very quickly exhaust the supply in the small
water tanks.

The trick to power distribution design is having enough energy storage
on the PCB (in the form of capacitors with several time constants) and
having big enough transport system (the impedance and inductance of the
power planes) in order to channel the energy from where it is stored to
where it is consumed.  All of the valves (capacitor ESR and mounting
inductance, BGA pin pattern, electronic package, etc) have to be sized
in order to not severely limit the flow of power from the capacitors to
the chips.

The concept of one cap per power pin has long outlived it's usefulness.
Come to think of it, the phrase "decoupling capacitor" has outlived it's
usefulness.  A much better phrase would be "power distribution
capacitor."

We now have to think in terms of having enough stored charge on our PCB
in order to support the power needs of the chips until a DC to DC
converter can respond to power transients.  We have to think in terms of
having sufficiently low impedance power planes to bus the power from the
cap locations (maybe 100's of them) to the power pins of our BGA's.
There is no way we will fit enough storage capacity for our chips on the
PCB within the BGA pattern.  There no way to identify which capacitor is
decoupling which pin.  The capacitors establish low impedance power
distribution system across a broad frequency range and the power planes
are the conduit to bring the power to the chips.  The whole system
should be sized consistently or you might end up with a weak link in
your chain.

regards,
Larry Smith
Sun Microsystems

> From: ANAND KURIAKOSE <Anand.Kuriakose@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Larry Smith <Larry.Smith@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [SI-LIST] Noise on BGA core voltage rail
> Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 10:43:57 -0700
> MIME-Version: 1.0
>=20
>       Hi Larry,
>
>       When decoupling huge BGAs, only few of the high frequency caps
can be=20
> placed directly under the BGA yielding very low inductance b/n the BGA

> power/GND pin and the caps.  This is done by placing vias facing out=20
> into the quadrants (i guess we call it offset via placement). But the=20
> remaining caps have to be and are placed around the periphery of the=20
> BGA. I do not know what better can be done in order to reduce the=20
> trace inductance b/n cap to BGA pin. Are there any other methods to=20
> reduce the inductance in the decoupling paths?
>=20
>       I have one more question. Since there will be a huge number of=20
> power/gnd pins in BGA (assume 729-pin BGA) we cannot afford to place=20
> one high frequency decap per power pin. If the power pins in the 4=20
> different quadrants of the BGA are decoupled unequally, will there be=20
> different levels of noise seen at power pins in the different=20
> quadrants?
>=20
>       Anand.
>=20

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