IC Test And Quality Requirements Drive New Collaboration


Rapidly increasing chip and package complexity, coupled with an incessant demand for more reliability, has triggered a frenzy of alliances and working relationships that are starting to redefine how chips are tested and monitored. At the core of this shift is a growing recognition that no company can do everything, and that to work together will require much tighter integration of flows, met... » read more

Cost And Quality Of Chiplets


Chiplets add a whole new challenge for the semiconductor industry. How much testing is enough? How do you optimize system binning? What’s the right amount of burn-in? The answers to these questions will vary, depending upon cost and quality tradeoffs, the number and source of the chiplets, and real-world workloads and projected lifespans. Marc Jacobs, senior director of solutions architectur... » read more

Adaptive Test Ramps For Data Intelligence Era


Widely available and nearly unlimited compute resources, coupled with the availability of sophisticated algorithms, are opening the door to adaptive testing. But the speed at which this testing approach is adopted will continue to vary due to persistent concerns about data sharing and the potential for IP theft and data leakage. Adaptive testing is all about making timely changes to a test p... » read more

Testing ICs Faster, Sooner, And Better


The infrastructure around semiconductor testing is changing as companies build systems capable of managing big data, utilizing real-time data streams and analysis to reduce escape rates on complex IC devices. At the heart of these tooling and operational changes is the need to solve infant mortality issues faster, and to catch latent failures before they become reliability problems in the fi... » read more

Deploying Cutting-Edge Adaptive Test Analytics Apps


By Ken Butler, Advantest, and Guy Cortez, Synopsys Semiconductor test challenges abound in this era of AI. As such, semiconductor test engineering is increasingly moving towards fully adaptive test where each device receives the “right” test content to assess its correctness. Advantest and Synopsys have partnered to provide new cutting-edge real-time adaptive test applications at the te... » read more

Harnessing The Power Of Data In Semiconductor Test


Every day, new methods are being developed to harvest, cleanse, integrate, and analyze data sources and extract from them useful, actionable intelligence to aid decision-making and other processes. This is true for a variety of industries, including semiconductor design, manufacturing, and test. Moore’s Law (figure 1) may be slowing with respect to traditional scaling of transistor critica... » read more

Using Analytics To Reduce Burn-in


Silicon providers are using adaptive test flows to reduce burn-in costs, one of the many approaches aimed at stemming cost increases at advanced nodes and in advanced packages. No one likes it when their cell phone fails within the first month of ownership. But the problems are much more pressing when the key components in data warehouse servers or automobiles fail. Reliability expectations ... » read more

Testing More To Boost Profits


Not all chips measure up to spec, but as more data becomes available and the cost of these devices continues to rise, there is increasing momentum to salvage and re-purpose chips for other applications and markets. Performance-based binning is as old as color-banded resistors, but the practice is spreading — even for the most advanced nodes and packages. Over the last three decades, engine... » read more

Adaptive Test Gains Ground


Not all devices get tested the same way anymore, and that’s a good thing. Quality, test costs, and yield have motivated product engineers to adopt test processes that fall under the umbrella of adaptive test, which uses test data to modify a subsequent test process. But to execute such techniques requires logistics that support analysis of data, as well as enabling changes to a test based ... » read more

New Data Format Boosts Test Analytics


Demand for more and better data for test is driving a major standards effort, paving the way for one of most significant changes in data formats in years. There is good reason for this shift. Data from device testing is becoming a critical element in test program decisions regarding limits and flows. This is true for everything from automotive and medical components to complex, heterogeneous... » read more

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