I think it is the responsibility of the engineer to consider layout when assigning pins. I recently had to assign pins for an FPGA. By considering board layout while doing this I was able to keep all of the signals going to/coming from the FPGA on one layer with no vias. This simplified layout, reduced board cost, saved real estate, etc. Maybe to do this the engineer needs to talk to the PCB person early in the design to determine the most realistic position for each component. Some engineers design with little regard to how the board layout will be. For the extreme densities of new designs that simply isn't acceptable. FPGAs, memories, microcontrollers, etc. offer us the luxery of determining what pins do what, it is our responsibility to do so intelligently.

Cory Spackman