Patent ID: 7816247

Claim:
A method for designing a land pattern for mating an integrated circuit device to a printed circuit board, the method comprising the steps of: (1) determining a number of required pads; (2) determining a number of required perimeter routing channels; and (3) selecting a land pattern to yield the required number of pads and number of required perimeter routing channels, including the steps of: (a) selecting a potential land pattern that at least yields the required pads, (b) selecting a pad arrangement for at least one corner portion of the selected potential land pattern, wherein the pad arrangement selected for a particular corner portion includes a corner pad and at least one pad adjacent to the corner pad in each of the two perimeter edges that intersect at the particular corner portion, wherein the corner pad is located where the two perimeter edges intersect, (c) under populating at least one perimeter edge of the selected potential land pattern to yield the selected pad arrangement for the at least one corner portion, and (d) after steps (b) and (c), determining whether the selected potential land pattern yields at least the determined number of required perimeter routing channels; wherein the under populating at least one perimeter edge comprises forming in a perimeter edge of the selected potential land pattern a pattern including a first conductive pad, a space, and a second conductive pad, wherein the pattern is repeated immediately in series in an outermost row; wherein step (d) comprises calculating a number of perimeter routing channels yielded by the selected potential land pattern, wherein said calculating step comprises the steps of: determining a number of unusable routing channels within the selected pad arrangement for at least one corner portion due to the selected pad arrangement; and subtracting the determined number of unusable routing channels within the selected pad arrangement for at least one corner portion due to the selected pad arrangement for at least one corner portion from a base number of routing channels yielded by the selected potential land pattern.