ATE standards efforts move ahead

Standards efforts are moving forward on two fronts in an attempt to drive down the cost of semiconductor test. The driving force behind each front is different, though, and it remains to be seen which, if either, will be more successful.

First is the nonprofit Semiconductor Test Consortium's (STC; www.semitest.org) push to establish an open hardware and software architecture. In June, the group issued the first draft of its Open Semiconductor Test Architecture (OpenStar) specification, less than a year after the STC's launch at Semicon West 2002 (see "Competing and consorting," Test & Measurement World, September 2002, p. 7).

Agilent's LTL browser works in conjunction with its 93000 Series testers. Courtesy of Agilent Technologies.

Fred Bode, STC secretary and manager, suggests that such user support could portend success paralleling that of VXI and PXI in the board and system test arena. Those standards, he says, were primarily vendor driven, while the strong user involvement in OpenStar's development could give a boost to its adoption.

Founding member Advantest (www.adventest.com) is one ATE vendor that's strongly behind the OpenStar initiative. The majority of key ATE makers, however, are not; most of those companies are pursuing limited open-platform strategies in which they will allow third parties to develop and manufacture specialized subsystems for their proprietary architectures.

Agilent Technologies marketing VP Tom Newsom likens open-architecture efforts such as the STC's to an attempt to design a standard carburetor interface for automobile engines. That's not what customers really want, he contends. Instead, he says, ATE vendors should be concentrating on the user interface.

To that end, Agilent has introduced its SmarTest PG CTL browser, which Newsom expects to do for design-for-test what HTML did for the Internet. CTL, the IEEE P1450.6 core test language, provides a standard description of the DFT functionality of intellectual-property cores employed within SOC designs to facilitate automatic test-program generation and test re-use.

Agilent's SmarTest PG CTL browser is an interactive, graphical suite of tools for digital pattern, timing, and format generation. Along with supporting the CTL standard, Agilent's CTL browser can read IEEE P1500 Standard Test Interface Language (STIL) files.

Of course, there may be room for both an open architecture like OpenStar and CTL-enabling tools like Agilent's CTL browser. The picture may become clearer at this fall's International Test Conference, which will feature a workshop on the future of semiconductor ATE.