#WINALIGN NEEDS AN ELECTRONIC KEY DRIVERS#

Trend 1: Lower technology nodes drive a higher number of untested transistors Cost of test escapes, quality metrics, and the increased complexity of hardware/software interactions in conjunction with the trends listed below drive an increased reliance on SLT in production. Today, SLT is no longer purely a vehicle to validate a DUT in early qualification stages, but a valuable tool to reach maximum test coverage. Devices such as CPUs, servers, graphics, and application processors required higher levels of massively parallel test. Subsequently, there was a renewed interest in more massively parallel systems that could make burn-in and SLT more affordable. The objective was to ensure that after integration into the final product, the device would meet its performance goals.Д®ventually, as some of the leading early adopters of lower technology nodes emerged, there was a drive to add SLT as a production test step. The engineer placed the DUT into a temporary socket on an end-product application board and used the actual firmware, device drivers, and operating systems to test how that DUT would operate and interact with the final hardware and software. In a way that closely resembled the final product. Mesh of SLT, structural, and functional test

SLT enabled a test or product engineer to create an environment to test a DUT Figure 1. Many used SLT during this time, but it focused on qualification and preproduction validation. Utilizing techniques such as design-for-test (DFT) and built-in-self test (BIST) methodologies also helped to screen for manufacturing defects by exercising more transistors. One would generate patterns, apply those patterns to a DUT, and then compare results to an expected outcome to evaluate whether or not the device met intended at-speed specifications.ДЄs MooreвЂ™s Law continued to drive a higher number of transistors at each new (lower) node, the complexity of the devices also increased, so the addition of structural test helped reach a higher level of fault coverage in production. Historically for semiconductor devices, functional test was performed on traditional automated test equipment (ATE) as the test vehicle of choice. The role of component-level system-level test This article covers some of those key trends and also points to the need for a massively parallel production SLT solution to best meet the need for testing todayвЂ™s complex semiconductor devices.

#WINALIGN NEEDS AN ELECTRONIC KEY DRIVERS#

This is not only driven due to increased pressure to lower the overall cost of test (CoT), but also due to a number of technical drivers driven by lower technology nodes (which drive higher transistor count) and the increased complexity of devices. While system-level testing (SLT) is not a new test methodology, it is a methodology that is gaining more attention, particularly for production testing.

Likewise, testing methodologies must evolve to address this emerging complexity and comprehensively evaluate devices under test (DUTs) for defects that appear in real-world conditions. Decades of advances in the semiconductor industry continue to drive an insatiable consumer demand for smaller, more powerful, more ubiquitous semiconductor devices-whether in our cars, within our smartphones, or around our wrists.

Winalign needs an electronic key