Pinpointing Timing Delays Can Improve Chip Reliability


Growing pressure to improve IC reliability in safety- and mission-critical applications is fueling demand for custom automated test pattern generation (ATPG) to detect small timing delays, and for chip telemetry circuits that can assess timing margin over a chip's lifetime. Knowing the timing margin in signal paths has become an essential component in that reliability. Timing relationships a... » read more

Optimizing Scan Test For Complex ICs


As chips become more heterogeneous with more integrated functionality, testing them presents increasing challenges — particularly for high-speed system-on-chip (SoC) designs with limited test pin availability. In addition, the complexity of emerging packages like 3D and chiplets necessitates comprehensive new solutions that can provide faster results at multiple stages in the silicon lifec... » read more

What Data Center Chipmakers Can Learn From Automotive


Automotive OEMs are demanding their semiconductor suppliers achieve a nearly unmeasurable target of 10 defective parts per billion (DPPB). Whether this is realistic remains to be seen, but systems companies are looking to emulate that level of quality for their data center SoCs. Building to that quality level is more expensive up front, although ultimately it can save costs versus having to ... » read more

Image Sensors Are Everywhere And The Implications For Test Are Significant


In February of 2021, the NASA Perseverance rover actively navigated a fully-autonomous entry and descent to successfully land in the Jezero Crater on Mars, using a brand-new navigational system developed by NASA – Terrain-Relative Navigation. The delay between mission control and the rover was about 11 minutes so a human-guided remote landing was not possible. Previous missions had to rely o... » read more

Test Challenges Mount As Demands For Reliability Increase


An emphasis of improving semiconductor quality is beginning to spread well beyond just data centers and automotive applications, where ICs play a role in mission- and safety-critical applications. But this focus on improved reliability is ratcheting up pressure throughout the test community, from lab to fab and into the field, in products where transistor density continues to grow — and wh... » read more

Advanced Digital Process Nodes Drive Semiconductor Test Innovations


Global internet traffic is growing exponentially, with no sign of slowing, and this demand is driving the evolution of the semiconductor industry. The appetite for more and more data requires sensors for capturing the data, networks for moving the data, storage, and processing power to analyze the data. As the demand for data grows, the underlying technologies must advance to not only meet toda... » read more

Standards: The Next Step For Silicon Photonics


Testing silicon photonics is becoming more critical and more complicated as the technology is used in new applications ranging from medicine to cryptography, lidar, and quantum computing, but how to do that in a way that is both consistent and predictable is still unresolved. For the past three decades, photonics largely has been an enabler for high-speed communications, a lucrative market t... » read more

Hunting For Hardware-Related Errors In Data Centers


The semiconductor industry is urgently pursuing design, monitoring, and testing strategies to help identify and eliminate hardware defects that can cause catastrophic errors. Corrupt execution errors, also known as silent data errors, cannot be fully isolated at test — even with system-level testing — because they occur only under specific conditions. To sort out the environmental condit... » read more

The 5G mmWave Commercialization Effort Is Underway


By David Vondran and Rodrigo Carrillo-Ramirez 5G broadband cellular technology entered its first major rollout phase in 2019. In recent years, 5G adoption has been very visible among the consumer electronics industry, with 5G capabilities now being a key selling point for mid-tier to high-end mobile devices. Behind the scenes, however, there have been a number of developments designed to ... » read more

Screening For Silent Data Errors


Engineers are beginning to understand the causes of silent data errors (SDEs) and the data center failures they cause, both of which can be reduced by increasing test coverage and boosting inspection on critical layers. Silent data errors are so named because if engineers don’t look for them, then they don’t know they exist. Unlike other kinds of faulty behaviors, these errors also can c... » read more

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