The LTXC Blog

Lowering Semiconductor Test Costs III: Design Validation vs. Production Test    As I began to think about this topic I realized there were quite a few different directions I could take this subject. How can design and test engineering work closer together to make test program development more efficient?  What can be done to speed up the initial coding of a test program? As DUT boards get more complex because of the drive to multisite, how can we work to shorten the time from design to fabrication? What other aspects of the program development process can we look at to collapse the time to release a program to production?  

How well does the single platform strategy for test fit with the reality of today’s semiconductor landscape? So my first blog posting on this topic set the stage by delving into the root cause of the challenges and opportunities we face as an industry, the consumer. I want to thank everyone that took the time to read the post, more than 500 people in less than a week, and especially the people that took the time to comment. It is a very important topic and the more discussion we have, and ideas we exchange, the better for all. 

It's not unusual to hear presentations from semiconductor company executives discussing (complaining about) the relatively high cost of test in the manufacturing of an IC. Significant advances have been made in the front end manufacturing process for an IC, while the cost of test has remained relatively high.

Peter Sarson from austriamicrosystems recently published this article in Test and Measurement World (and here at EE Times).  It talks about making RF measurements on VHF receivers on ATE using techniques that correlate adjacent channel rejection (ACR) to signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on the tester, and to bit error rate (BER) on the bench setup.

As the recognized leader in low cost, RF power amplifier testing you would think our apps guys would have a lot to say on what to consider when looking to test these types of devices. Guess what, your thinking would be right!

Through the years many of our esteemed applications engineers have written white papers on semiconductor testing techniques. Even though some of these papers were written several years ago the topics are timeless and the information can be applied to solving today's semiconductor test challenges just as they were when they were first developed.

John Leonard, Tactical Marketing Manager at Nordic Semiconductor offered to post a blog entry on Bluetooth LE for readers to gain a better understanding of Bluetooth LE technology, what types of applications Bluetooth LE devices are best suited for, and what are some of the considerations as it relates to testing Bluetooth LE devices.  If you have any questions or comments you can post them at the end of this article and John will respond.

I'm sure many of you know Sol Max and his area of expertise but for those of you that don't let me give you a little background. Sol, now an LTX-Credence Fellow, was one of the seven original founders of LTX back in the late 70's (and yes you can still find Sol in our Norwood, MA headquarters working on some challenging engineering problem).  Throughout his career Sol has authored numerous technical papers, many of them on different strategies and techniques for testing data converters. In my humble opinion Sol is the preeminent expert on data converting testing.

Energy conservation is a good thing right? So what about applying energy conservation to semiconductor test equipment? It makes financial sense to consider operating costs, especially electricity costs, when selecting a test system. In some cases the savings on electricity costs over a multi-year period can lead to one of the tester actually paying for itself.Depending on the region and the testers being compared the annual savings could reach $30K - $50K per year!

We normally reserve the blog for general industry questions and content but will make rare exceptions for new product announcements from LTXC we think are important developments for the industry. The Diamondx is one of those products.