The Severity Of Test Escapes And SDCs Caused By Them (Google)


A new technical paper titled "Silent Data Corruption by 10x Test Escapes Threatens Reliable Computing" was published by Google. Abstract "Too many defective compute chips are escaping existing manufacturing tests -- at least an order of magnitude more than industrial targets across all compute chip types in data centers. Silent data corruptions (SDCs) caused by test escapes, when left unadd... » read more

Test Hyperconvergence In Semiconductor Development


Back when semiconductor devices contained only a few thousand gates, manufacturing test was almost an afterthought. The development team threw the chip “over the wall” to the test engineers, who developed a set of test patterns for the manufacturing floor. As this process became more automated and chips became more complicated, test considerations crept into the development flow and design-... » read more

Addressing Silicon Lifecycle Scaling Demands


In today’s competitive business landscape, navigating complexity can be a decisive advantage, but it also presents significant challenges. Three crucial trends driving the rise of complexity are technology scaling, design scaling and system scaling. Traditionally, Design for Test (DFT) solutions have focused on the die level; however, these challenges present opportunities at the package and ... » read more

A Lightweight Scan Instrumentation For Enhancing The Post-Silicon Test Efficiency in ICs (U. of Florida)


A technical paper titled "Enhancing Test Efficiency through Automated ATPG-Aware Lightweight Scan Instrumentation" was published by researchers at University of Florida. Abstract "Scan-based Design-for-Testability (DFT) measures are prevalent in modern digital integrated circuits to achieve high test quality at low hardware cost. With the advent of 3D heterogeneous integration and chiplet-b... » read more

Better ATPG To Minimize Chip Test Time And Cost


As chips get ever bigger and more complex, the electronic design automation (EDA) industry must innovate constantly to keep up. Engineers expect every new generation of silicon to be modeled, simulated, laid out, and checked in about the same time with the same effort, despite the growth in die size and density. One area of particular focus is manufacturing test. Any effort expended to reduce t... » read more

Shifting Left With DFT To Optimize Productivity, Testability, And Time-To-Market


This paper discusses one of the Siemens EDA shift-left strategies in the RTL-to-signoff flow: shift-left design-for-test (DFT). Tessent RTL Pro software automates the analysis and insertion of Tessent VersaPoint test point technology, LBIST-OST test points, dedicated scan wrapper cells and x-bounding logic as behavioral code at the RTL level. Tessent RTL Pro builds on Tessent’s market-leading... » read more

Identifying Sources Of Silent Data Corruption


Silent data errors are raising concerns in large data centers, where they can propagate through systems and wreak havoc on long-duration programs like AI training runs. SDEs, also called silent data corruption, are technically rare. But with many thousands of servers, which contain millions of processors running at high utilization rates, these damaging events become common in large fleets. ... » read more

Shift Left In DFT Design


The semiconductor industry continues to face numerous challenges as designs approach reticle limits, process nodes evolve and engineering resources become increasingly stretched. It is essential to maintain high productivity and quality throughout the design flow. This keeps projects on schedule, within budget, and ensures they remain high-quality, reliable, yield well and perform as intended. ... » read more

Failure To Launch


Failure analysis (FA) is an essential step for achieving sufficient yield in semiconductor manufacturing, but it’s struggling to keep pace with smaller dimensions, advanced packaging, and new power delivery architectures. All of these developments make defects harder to find and more expensive to fix, which impacts the reliability of chips and systems. Traditional failure analysis techniqu... » read more

Optimizing DFT With AI And BiST


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to explore how AI impacts design for testability, with Jeorge Hurtarte, senior director of product marketing in the Semiconductor Test Group at Teradyne; Sri Ganta, director of test products at Synopsys; Dave Armstrong, principal test strategist at Advantest; and Lee Harrison, director of Tessent automotive IC solutions at Siemens EDA. Wh... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →