The diagonal orientation of the DDR3 chip and corresponding diagonal traces I suspect is a choice made by the author to ease the layout process - it's more likely that is hand laid out to get traces of somewhat similar length with a minimum of fuss, followed by a length matching tool. A non-standard orientation can cause issues with pick-and-place machinery, which usually will handle 90 degrees fine, and _often_ 45 degrees fine, but (AFAIK) _rarely_ anything else, but that's not a problem for the author because he's assembling it himself. A diagonal IC also usually results in wasted space, which you can see in the empty areas of the resulting board. A 90 degree orientation may have allowed for a few more decoupling capacitor banks, but since his board works, who am I to sit here and judge?