Reliability Becomes The Top Concern In Automotive


Reliability is emerging as the top priority across the hottest growth markets for semiconductors, including automotive, industrial and cloud-based computing. But instead of replacing chips every two to four years, some of those devices are expected to survive for up to 20 years, even with higher usage in sometimes extreme environmental conditions. This shift in priorities has broad ramificat... » read more

Why Test Costs Will Increase


The economics of test are under siege. Long seen as a necessary but rather mundane step in ensuring chip quality, or a way of testing circuitry from the inside while it is still in use, manufacturers and design teams have paid little attention to this part of the design-through-manufacturing flow. But problems have been building for some time in three separate areas, and they could have a b... » read more

Ensuring Chip Reliability From The Inside


Monitoring activity and traffic is emerging as an essential ingredient in complex, heterogeneous chips used in automotive, industrial, and data center applications. This is particularly true in safety-critical applications such as automotive, where much depends on the system operating exactly right at all times. To make autonomous and assisted driving possible, a mechanism to ensure systems ... » read more

What’s In The Package?


Putting a variety of chips or hardened IP blocks into a package rather than trying to cram them into a single chip continues to gain ground. But it's also creating its own set of issues around verifying and testing these devices. This problem is well understood inside of SoCs, where everything is integrated into a single die. And looked at from a 30,000-foot perspective, packaging is someth... » read more

Improving In-System Test With Tessent VersaPoint Test Point Technology


This paper describes a new versatile test point technology called VersaPoint, which has been developed specifically to work with designs implementing mixed EDT/LBIST methodologies to reduce EDT pattern counts and improve Logic BIST (LBIST) test coverage. VersaPoint test points can reduce compressed pattern counts 2X to 4X beyond compression alone and improve LBIST test coverage beyond what is p... » read more

Auto Chip Test Issues Grow


By Jeff Dorsch & Ed Sperling Semiconductor suppliers are flocking to the automotive chip market to gain share in fitting out the connected car and the autonomous vehicle. But before those chips are sold to automotive manufacturers and Tier 1 suppliers, they must be tested and certified to meet stringent industry standards. This is no ordinary testing, though. Assisted and autonomous v... » read more

High Performance, Low Power, And Test: DFT’s Impact On System PPA And Safety


Back in the day, test was an afterthought in system design and implementation. It was a separate task that could be added to the end of a project schedule—essentially, a checkbox before sending a design for manufacture or during product qualification. Nowadays, test is no longer an afterthought, and we’ll see it continue to grow in importance. Safety-critical semiconductor applications h... » read more

Putting Design Back Into DFT


Test always has been a delicate balance between cost and quality, but there are several changes happening in the industry that might cause a significant alteration in strategy. Part one of this two part series about [getkc id="47" comment="Design for Test (DFT)"] looked at changes in areas such as automotive, where built in self-test is becoming a mandated part of the design process. This co... » read more

New Drivers For Test


Mention Design for Test (DFT) and scan chains come to mind, but there is much more to it than that—and the rules of the game are changing. New application areas such as automotive may breathe new life into built-in self-test (BIST) solutions, which could also be used for manufacturing test. So could DFT as we know it be a thing of the past? Or will it continue to have a role to play? Te... » read more

Accelerating Design-For-Test Pattern Simulation


The Veloce DFT App presents a true “left shift” improvement for a traditional chip design schedule that requires comprehensive gate-level simulations to develop ATPG, BIST, or functional patterns. It enables running complete patterns for DFT verification in a reasonable time to shorten the pattern development cycle. The Veloce DFT App fits seamlessly into the Veloce ecosystem, enabling a ho... » read more

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