LTX-Credence touts production-test architecture, chip firms report success with NI characterization tools
By Rick Nelson, Editor in Chief -- Test & Measurement World, 10/30/2009 10:47:57 AM
Semiconductor test has been grabbing the attention of test vendors on divergent sides of the test-equipment spectrum. Traditional semiconductor ATE supplier LTX-Credence has developed a new production-test architecture, while National Instruments, which has been more focused on system rather than chip test, is touting successful application of its PXI hardware and virtual-instrument software to semiconductor characterization and validation projects at ST-Ericsson, Austriamicrosystems, and ON Semiconductor.
LTX-Credence (www.ltx-credence.com) has announced a new IMA (integrated multisystem architecture) for combining low cost systems into large tester arrays. Aimed at improving production-floor efficiencies and reducing energy consumption, the IMA approach allows customers to treat low-cost test systems as fundamental building blocks. Rather than purchase expensive, physically large, high-pin-count systems, customers can purchase an IMA controller that lets them gang multiple low-cost systems into a tester array that enables massive multisite testing. IMA tester arrays can be rapidly reconfigured into individual testers to address the volatile dynamics of semiconductor production.
The first LTX-Credence offering using IMA is the Diamond platform. The company cites as an example an IMA array using three air-cooled Diamond test systems to provide customers with up to 2400 digital/analog pins, in a footprint requiring half the floor space compared with traditional high-pin-count platforms.
"Today, manufacturers purchase larger, expensive systems to address devices requiring a high number of tester resources, but often use them for much less demanding applications," said Bruce MacDonald, VP of marketing at LTX-Credence. "IMA changes the paradigm to compact, lower cost platforms, optimizing resource deployment without sacrificing high-end needs," he added.
Addressing characterization and validation
For its part, National Instruments (www.ni.com) has not recently released any new products directly targeting semiconductor test, but Scott Savage, NI's market development manager for semiconductor test, has been touting its customers' success in using LabView and PXI hardware for semiconductor validation and characterization.
Savage reports that Sylvain Bertrand of ST-Ericsson (www.stericsson.com), Jean-Louis Schricke of Mesulog (www.mesulog.fr), and Emmanuel Boivin of Saphir (www.saphir.fr) deployed an RFIC characterization software platform based on NI LabView and NI TestStand to automate the characterization of complex RFICs in a global design environment that consists of multiple teams with varying levels of test automation. Reports Bertrand (sine.ni.com/cs/app/doc/p/id/cs-11536), "The new test automation platform built on NI TestStand and LabVIEW helped us reduce the time necessary to validate an RFIC from two months to three weeks."
In addition, Manfred Pauritsch of the University of Applied Sciences and Wolfgang Koren of Austriamicrosystems (www.austriamicrosystems.com) report (ine.ni.com/cs/app/doc/p/id/cs-11971) that they replaced existing bench equipment with a fully automatic measurement system to accurately characterize ADCs (analog-to-digital converters) to improve quality, reduce costs, and shorten test development time. They employed PXI components capable of performing a variety of measurements, including INL (integral nonlinearity), DNL (differential nonlinearity), and SINAD (signal-to-noise-distortion ratio) to characterize Austriamicrosystems ADCs.
Finally, Ray Morgan of ON Semiconductor recounts (sine.ni.com/cs/app/doc/p/id/cs-11972) how he increased validation throughput for new semiconductor product introductions as well as legacy products by replacing costly, stand-alone test equipment with a modular PXI-based platform that uses the latest processor technologies to achieve semiconductor validation at 10 times the speed and at a fraction of the space and price.
Editor's note: Interestingly, neither LTX-Credence nor National Instruments will be exhibiting at the semiconductor-test-centric International Test Conference next week. Unfortunately, I can't be there either. Over the next two weeks, I'll be looking for test and inspection highlights at Vision 2009 and Productronica. As for ITC, EDN executive editor Ron Wilson will be covering the show for Test & Measurement World as well as EDN.
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