High-Speed Manufacturing And In-Field Scan Test Access Via PCI Express For GPIO Limited SoCs


By Ash Patel and Shubharthi Datta, Synopsys, and Chuanyun Fan, Cisco Today’s huge, deep submicron system on chip (SoC) designs present many challenges at every stage of development, from architectural exploration to volume production. This post addresses the specific hurdle of effective and efficient manufacturing tests for these complex devices. It outlines a commercially available soluti... » read more

Enhancing Silicon Reliability With In-System Test And SLM Data


Innovation in semiconductor development and manufacturing shows no signs of slowing down. Ever-larger chips at ever-smaller geometries create new challenges all the time. At the same time, competitive pressures are shrinking time to market (TTM) and putting enormous pressure on project teams. Furthermore, the wide use of electronics in safety-critical applications demands better reliability, av... » read more

Analog Scan: Unlocking A New Era In Mixed-Signal Test


Anyone involved in IC product sign-off that includes a mixed signal design portion knows that developing robust tests for these intricate designs has historically been a significant bottleneck, no matter the application. It's a hurdle many of us have faced, leading to extended development times, high costs, and sometimes an unsettling uncertainty about the true quality of our tests. Traditio... » read more

Are You Using Structural Patterns In An SLT Environment?


Extending the in‑field life of your silicon is essential for long‑term success and for staying ahead of your competitors in today’s rapidly evolving digital world of data centers, automotive and cellular chipsets, and AI applications. For those reasons, it’s increasingly important to test your silicon in a System Level Test (SLT) environment. Testing in an SLT environment offers many be... » read more

Why Scan Diagnosis Should Be Part Of Every Fabless Company’s Yield Playbook


A fabless semiconductor company's world spins around two things, pushing design differentiation and getting those designs to market quickly and profitably. Yield isn’t just a manufacturing KPI. It's a business lever. And one of the most under-used levers in modern fabs is scan diagnosis, the practice of turning deterministic test infrastructure and failing test data into precise and action... » read more

Integrating Design Verification To Approach Zero Defects


As semiconductor applications in automotive, data center, and high-performance computing grow increasingly mission-critical, the industry faces mounting pressure to achieve near-perfect manufacturing test coverage—often exceeding 99%. Yet, meeting stringent zero-defect defective parts per million (DPPM) targets remains a formidable challenge. Traditional structural testing methods frequently ... » read more

Revolutionizing Chip Testing: Navigating Bottlenecks


In today's rapidly evolving semiconductor landscape, System-on-Chips (SoCs) are becoming increasingly complex, integrating multiple processing cores, specialized accelerators and vast memory arrays. This escalating complexity, while enabling incredible functionality, presents significant challenges for Design-for-Test (DFT) engineers. Ensuring the thorough and efficient testing of these intrica... » read more

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

Changes In Scan Test Data


Bigger designs with hundred of cores are creating an explosion in the volume of scan test data, significantly bumping up the amount of time spent on test. That raises the cost of test, forcing chipmakers to trade off higher costs with reliability. The solution is to raise the level of abstraction for scan tests, using a bus and packetized data that can run at much higher frequencies than is pos... » read more

Optimizing Tester Memory Resources With Pooling Technology


The rapid evolution of semiconductor devices has amplified the demand for advanced automated test equipment (ATE) that can handle increasingly complex test scenarios for logic devices. ATE vector memory is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity as scan-pattern volume soars. Extrapolations based on data from the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) indicate that scan d... » read more

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