Articles by Mike Heimlich, AWR Corp.

Prior to the circuit design and especially in larger designs, EM tools are used to create “library” parts such as inductors, transitions and antennas. While these parts are fairly self-contained, they must ultimately be integrated into the overall design where at the very least they must be connected to the rest of the circuit or in a more complex case be coupled to it. During both early and later stages of design, designers will switch from circuit-based models to EM analysis of critical interconnects to better understand couplings and achieve greater accuracy.

For this discussion we will differentiate Multi-chip modules (MCM) as essentially dozens of chips interconnected on a small form factor single layer substrate, System-in-Package (SiP) being the 3D chip stacking of bare or packaged chips on a multi-layer substrate and the System-on-Package (SoP) as similar to the SiP with...