[Answered]: Distinction between a pad and a pin?

[kolban]

As I study the ESP32 technical reference manual, I come across the term "pad". I have intuitively been mentally thinking of these as what I would call a "pin" or a "GPIO pin" but it dawns on me that words have power and I may be wrong and too loose on my thinking. Can anyone help me comprehend a distinction (if any) between the usage of the phrase "pad" and "pin"?

[WiFive]

Does a qfn package have pads or pins?

[kolban]

Thank you sir. I had to go and read what a "QFN" was. For those who didn't know (like me) it is a "Quad Flat No-leads package". See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_Flat ... ds_package

For the purposes of our ESP32 discussions, this appears to be how raw ESP32 ICs come from Espressif before being attached to PCBs. As such, an ESP32 (raw) is distributed in QFN form and the name given to the "metal" that one solders to a PCB appears to be termed a "pad".

[ThomasB]

Hmm. I knew that pin and pad mean the same thing but I thought that is because the gpio fabric has a pad for bonding on the chip. The fact that some packages have pads instead of pins makes much more sense though

[Pibbotley]

There are pads on a PCB and pads on a silicon wafer, the pins bridge the gap for the pads in use. A gpio is a service connected to a pad, which may be connected to a pin, which may be connected to a PCB.