Autodesk Eagle 8 - BGA autorouting doesn't work. Crashes.

[wingedpower]

OS: Mac OS X 10.x

Eagle: Version 8 for Mac OS X 10.x

Put on a BGA(any size/kind, ranging from small 32 to 560 BGA). Attempt BGA autorouting, selected the BGA IC/UC. It runs, never goes above 0% and then the routing window goes away or the Eagle program as a whole crashes.

This is with default settings. When I change the settings so that the lines are thinner or the clearances are thinner to allow thinner traces, it still crashes.

There is no swapping when this happens it and it doesn't show me what the error was. It just crashes.

BGA auto-routing/escape routing is kind of important, but right now, it's basically doing nothing. 

I did get it to sort of route a bit when I had two BGA and links between them. But it only routed a 3-4 traces and stopped. It only routed them for one BGA device and only to the edge of the device. I was never able to get it to repeat it again without crashing.

What's going on? What's the fix?

[edwin.robledo]

Hi Wingedpower,

Thank you for using EAGLE and participating on our forums.  I am really sorry that at this time the BGA Router is not working as expected.  I have contacted the developers and made a note on their thread.  I am not able to provide you a timeline, but I can assure you that they are currently working on it.

Can you please provide me the details of you Mac.  What version are you using?  Does the BGA Router ever star or does the Crash immediately?

Any other details will be greatly appreciated. 

Best Regards,

[wingedpower]

Thanks. I'm really looking forward to it, as I've started working with
relatively high density BGA parts and this feature would be a huge time
saver.

Wing Wong
wingedpower@gmail.com
http://about.me/wingtangwong
https://www.facebook.com/wingedpower

[edwin.robledo]

Hi Wing,

What version of Mac are you using?

Ed

[wingedpower]

Mac OS X Sierra - 10.12.2 (MacBook Pro, 16GB of ram)

[wingedpower]

More details:

Eagle starts up fine. I have the BGA part and some connections to things like JTAG header pins noted. Just air wires.

I kick off the BGA Autorouter and select the IC in question. I don't make any other adjustments and I hit start.

The BGA Autorouter window indicates 1 worker at 0% and just sits like that for about 20-40 seconds. Maybe longer. Then one of two things happens:

1) The BGA autorouter window closes and nothing seems to have changed. 

or

2) Eagle itself crashes. 

There is no error message other than the Mac OS X debug reporter popup after Eagle crashes. There are some temp files left over from when the BGA autorouter was attempting it's work in the project folder.

[jorge_garcia2]

Hello wingedpower,

Our developer is asking for a sample file to analyze. Could you please send the file to jorge.garcia@autodesk.com or if you feel comfortable post it here.

Best Regards,

[wingedpower]

Running a screencast... looks like it's running longer than 30-40 seconds, not sure what's different today.

[wingedpower]

Sure thing, here it is. Zip'd up the files in the folder. There's no confidential design data, I just started a new schematic/board with the BGA560.

Please find it attached to this post.

[wingedpower]

Here is a screencast of the attempt to use the BGA router operation and of it failing. There is an activity monitor in the bottom towards the middle/end of the recording showing memory usage.

[estevens]

I just tried the BGA routing with your files and I get this on Linux Mint 17.3, 64-bit after quite a lengthy wait.

eagle: minisat/core/Solver.cc:494: void Minisat::Solver::uncheckedEnqueue(Minisat::Lit, Minisat::CRef): Assertion `value(p) == l_Undef' failed.

[wingedpower]

Thanks for giving it a go, estevens!

Hopefully, the developers will be able to do something with that.

Question, are you able to get BGA autorouter to work with any of your own designs?

[edwin.robledo]

Hi estevens,

Your participation on the forum is greatly appreciated, earlier today I had updated and existing case for this.  I have updated our entry with your computer details.  Developers are currently looking into it.

Best Regards,

Ed

[estevens]

I tried placing an Altera Cyclone III EP3C120F780 from the Eagle libraries, added a few nets crossing paths, ran the BGA Autorouter and had the same failure.

Eric

[wingedpower]

So since it didn't work for me on Mac and didn't work for Eric in Linux, I fired up my Windows 10 VM and tried it there with a BGA560.

Clean schematic, just the Altera Flex 10K100A BGA560. GND and VCC airwires.

Ran the BGA router and it still fails, but I see some differences:

• Bottom right, green process bar and message at bottom of window actually tells me what is going on. In the Mac OS X version, I don't see any of these updates. 😞
• With the default design rules, it still fails. BGA router window closes, no network traces laid down. Eagle itself still running.
• With design rules changed to reflect much smaller mils for width and spacing, it reaches optimization step #1 (progress is still 0.0%) when Windows detected that the program stopped running and needed to close eagle.exe. Eagle itself crashes.

So it's definitely not working in any of the three OS(s) that are officially supported.

Under what conditions was this feature noted as working before it shipped? 🙂  (Sorry, not meant to be critical, but I find it somewhat amusing since I had assumed it would be working in the Windows version at least.)

Wing.

[jorge_garcia2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Wing,

I have an answer. So the developer was able to review the file and has provided some suggestions.

The key issue here is that, this type of BGA requires microvias(aka via in pad) in order to be fanned out on a two layer board. Having additional layers could have helped also. The attached screenshots show the DRC settings, pay special attention to the sizes tab picture because that is the one that sets up the micro vias. The key point to remember here is that in order to enable microvias the Minimum Micro Via value must be smaller than the minimum drill value.

The other key point here is that this BGA doesn't have any signals defined other than the power signals so it's netlist is very sparse. The reason I mention that is that it took almost an hour to produce the result in the attached board file. Perhaps if more signals were defined it would speed up, since in demos I have seen it works much faster.

Please accept as solution if my post fully resolves or you issue, or reply with additional details if the problem persists.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[wingedpower]

Thanks for the settings. I tried them out, but Eagle still crashed. Not sure what's up there.

I downloaded the DRU from Oshpark, one of the fabs I use, and I was able to get it to BGA autoroute. However, after connecting more links and attempting to BGA autoroute, Eagle crashed again. On attempting to restart, I get a white screen indicating an error:

Cannot GET /123d-circuits/actions/forge/callback?code=<removed>&state<removed>

Eagle 8.0 keeps showing that error screen on attempting to startup. 😞

W.

[wingedpower]

Hmm... I've flagged your answer as a solution, not because it is working for me, but because I see that changing the DRU rules allow it to progress further. However, this is what I've done:

• Updated the DRU rules
• Added links to each pin
• Ran BGA auto-router
• Makes it through "Creating Work Graphs"
• Then it just exits from BGA routing.

It goes through planning, but when it goes to solving, it drops to 0% completed and exits out. Eagle doesn't crash, but it also doesn't do any routing.

At this point, going to stick with AutoRouter (non-bga). 

I have the standard version of Eagle, so I'm limited to 2 layers. 🙂 If the BGA router doesn't handle 2 layers well enough to run stably, I don't see bumping up my subscription to attempt to test out multiple layers.  

W.

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi wingedpower,

I'll tackle the other issues you are running into in a second, but just wanted to let you know that the standard is going 4 layers so you'll be able to do a lot more.

See the announcement here:
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/eagle-forum/a-path-forward-for-the-make-license-a-step-up-for-standard...

Best Regards,

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi Wingedpower,

The devs just informed me that they found the issue and have corrected it in the code. The next update will have it incorporated and you should see a lot more happening then.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,