AN 114: Board Design Guidelines for Intel Programmable Device Packages

ID 683481
Date 5/27/2022
Public
Document Table of Contents

1.2.5. Surface Land Pad

Surface land pads are the areas on the PCB to which the BGA solder balls adhere. The size of these pads affects the space available for vias and for escape routing. In general, surface land pads are available in the following two basic designs:

  • Non solder mask defined (NSMD), also known as copper defined
  • Solder mask defined (SMD)

The main differences between the two surface land pad types are the size of the trace and spacing between the trace lines, the type of vias you can use, and the shape of the solder balls after solder reflow.

Figure 2. Side View of NSMD and SMD Land Pads
Figure 3. Side View of NSMD and SMD Solder Joints