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2 contractors, 64GB ram and 8 EC2 compute units and I STILL can't autoroute!

Former Member

Disclaimer - I'm the software guy, no the hardware guy)

 

Quick Deatils

  • Board is 11" x 11"
  • Contains two large BGA-like pad arrays, each with 364 pins
  • Contains ~580 parts
  • Board has 4217 connections

 

 

I've got quite the drama unfolding over here.

  1. We hired a contractor to do schematic capture and routing.
  2. He did the schematic and was into about 5 days of routing when he suggested to add two more layers to try to speed up the routing
  3. After adding the layers there was virtually no change
  4. We decided to move to another, more experienced contractor who also was going to make some vital circuit changes
  5. He made some additional schematic changes FAST and got right to routing
  6. After 2 days, the route job is still only at 93% (been there for about 12 hours now)
  7. He also asked for two more layers (now we're up to 8) and to drop the trace to .05mil
  8. It's STILL crawling
  9. I thought that eagle may be CPU/memory bound so I brought the most power Amazon EC2 Windows instance online (64GB ram and 26 compute units (30+ Ghz CPU power))
  10. I was shocked to see that Eagle only used one core and barely any ram and continued to drag along at an agonizing pace

 

At this point I'm getting desparate.  We have a HARD deadline coming up and if I don't come up with some gerber files in 3-4 days my project will be a disaster and could quite literally destroy my business.  I'm not being dramatic, it really could deal a death blow if we don't have this project ready for a trade show that's coming up.

 

So I wanted to ask the community here what ideas you may have for me?  A couple questions I have:

  1. Does the linux version of eagle utilize multiple cores/CPUs?
  2. Is the linux version native 64bit so it can use those 64GB of ram?
  3. Are the really expensive applications (OrCad) able to route circles around Eagle?  Should I jump my eagle ship and seek out a contractor with a higher-end toolset?
  4. If yes to #3, can the *.sch and *.brd files be imported into OrCad?

 

Please help.

 

-Steve

  • I came across this blog post - Sounds like my question #2 was answered.

     

    So CadSoft isn't exactly staying current, are they?  image

  • in reply to Former Member

    Gotta love that Eagle is reporting "Out of Memory" on hardware with 64GB of memory.

     

    So my problem has now changed from "taking too long" to "eagle crashes and can't handle the file" - NOW I'm really screwed.

  • in reply to Former Member

    Hello Steve,

     

    It's a long time since I was in this hole - contractor ignored the design rules and we had a layout we couldn't use and 1 week from an unbreakable deadline. We we trialling  the Specctra autorouter at the time and it did the job without any problems. Se we paid up for the license ( about £10k then) and our bacon was saved.

    This was  a while ago but it might be worth askng Cadence if they want to have a go - I assume that they and others have moved on.

    Do the BGA chip suppliers make any suggestions re. number of layers to give you an idea of what's typical.

    It's a bit late to change horses now but you might have no choice - can you find a design houes that has Eagle and Cadence so might be able to give you an unbiased and informed opinion.

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Hi Michael,

     

    Thanks for the suggestions and sharing your experience.  I'm still in the same pickle and having a difficult time finding a company that wants to take on the project.  Tomorrow I will begin contacting the software vendors asking for referrals in my area.

     

    BTW, did you notice how similar our last names are?  image

     

    Thanks again,

    Steve

  • in reply to Former Member

    On 9/13/11 12:32 AM, Steve Klett wrote:

    Hi Michael,

     

    Thanks for the suggestions and sharing your experience.  I'm still in the same pickle and having a difficult time finding a company that wants to take on the project.  Tomorrow I will begin contacting the software vendors asking for referrals in my area.

     

    BTW, did you notice how similar our last names are?  image

     

    Thanks again,

    Steve

     

     

    Contact me at <a.sterian@emsyde.com> as I may be able to help.

     

    Andrew.

     

  • Hi Steve,

     

    This is Jorge Garcia of Cadsoft support.

     

    I can guarantee you that the problem lies with those BGAs, fanning out of a BGA is very difficult especially one with so many pins. I would recommend that you use micro vias and manually fan out from the BGAs; once you're out from under them the autorouter would be able to make relatively quick work of the rest of the board.

     

    To answer some of the questions you posted,the operating system has very little to do with the speed of the autorouter, EAGLE is exactly the same across all three major Os's. All of the muscle your machines have is futile because EAGLE can't make use of multiple cores(this is true of most commercial software today, parallization isn't the easiest thing to manage). Using another ECAD vendor's autorouter will only help if their autorouters are not grid-based; even that isn't a guarantee. Finally, there's no easy means to import EAGLE files into any other ECAD vendor (or vice versa) , there is a third party company that specializes in these types of conversions, but they can be a little pricey.

     

    Please e-mail support@cadsoftusa.com we'd like to see what we can do to get you out of your jam.

  • in reply to Jorge_Garcia

    Jorge_Garcia wrote:

     

    Hi Steve,

     

    This is Jorge Garcia of Cadsoft support.

     

    ....

     

    Please e-mail support@cadsoftusa.com we'd like to see what we can do to get you out of your jam.

    Hi Jorge,

     

    Thank you for the suggestions and comments.  I have just sent an email to support.

     

    -Steve

  • in reply to Former Member

    Hello Steve,

     

    2 other things you might consider (and may well have done already) -

     

    Use the BGA manufacturers suggested tracking from the BGA to the rest of the board and make that the footprint of your part.

     

    Secondly - have you optimised the connections of the BGAs to the rest of the design  - if they are FPGAs it can make a huge difference to the board but cost very little effort in the FPGA. (and if you do this optimisation you need to do it from the fanned out BGA to the rest of the world which may not mean the most obvious BGA pins.)