Choosing the right chip socket

摘要

Many products are designed with today's high-performance ICs. Without sockets, the design, testing, and/or production phases of new product development would be chaotic, but as devices are designed with finer pitches, larger I/O counts, and increased gate densities, the demands on sockets become greater. Socket selection should be systematic, taking into account the different aspects of the IC development test phase. Electrical properties (such as inductance, current carrying capacity, and bandwidth) and mechanical properties (such as insertion force and number of cycles) must be considered to narrow down socket selection. Thermal requirements put up another hurdle, and force the designer to consider material selection, design, analysis, optimization, and cooling-systemverifi-cation.