Semicon West 2003

Semicon West, July 16–18, 2003, San Jose, CA, www.semi.org

Advantest (www.advantest.com) continued championing a multivendor open standard for system-on-chip (SOC) test, saying it has developed testers compliant with the Openstar standard being developed by the Semiconductor Test Consortium (www.semitest.org)....For its part, the consortium said that it released the second draft of Openstar specs....NPTest (www.nptest.com) introduced the Sapphire system-on-chip (SOC) ATE system, which embodies NPTest's NPower architecture; the company will invite third-party instrument makers to build Npower-compliant instruments....Agilent Technologies (www.agilent.com) reaffirmed support for its 93000 platform and rolled out a $399,000, 128-channel version for SOCs that incorporate design-for-test (DFT) technology....Teradyne (www.teradyne.com) announced the sale of multiple high-end Tiger and Catalyst SOC testers, reporting it now has an installed base of more than 1200 Catalyst systems.

Analog, flash, and RF

This 1-mm evaluation socket, a member of Johnstech's Pad series, costs half as much as a high-throughput production version.

Probes and parameters

FormFactor (www.formfactor.com) announced its BladeRunner175, a 175-micrometer-pitch wafer-probing system designed to protect delicate low-k dielectrics in 90-nm flip-chip devices....Electroglas (www.electroglas.com) announced its new Sidewinder strip-test-handling system based on 300-mm wafer-probing technology; the company also introduced its NETprobing technology, which networks a system of smart probers....Cascade Microtech (www.cascademicrotech.com) introduced new fine-pitch Pyramid Probe cards for DC parametric test of wafer process-control modules and for test of consumer RF semiconductors....Keithley Instruments (www.keithley.com) demonstrated methods for improving electrical-oxide-thickness metrology and also described an adaptive-test approach that shortens parametric wafer-test times....W.L. Gore (www.gore.com) introduced a 10-GHz probe assembly—an alternative to spring-loaded probe-pin interconnects that can serve as an interface to a semiconductor ATE system's load board.

Contactors and sockets

Everett Charles Technologies announced its BantamPak line of test contactors for area-array packages; the contactors offer –1-dB bandpass performance to 15 GHz....Johnstech (www.johnstech.com) announced a 1-mm evaluation socket in its Pad series; at $1500, it costs half as much as high-throughput production versions....IDI's Synergetix division demonstrated its Cam Lock test-socket lid design, which employs a threaded screw mechanism for control of compression; the company also has added automated design capability for QFN packages to its www.socketbuilder.com site....Aries Electronics (www.arieselec.com) demonstrated 13-mm-wide RF test sockets that offer 0.50-mm and higher pitches and up to 10-GHz performance.

Looking and cooking

Matrox (www.matrox.com) demonstrated release 7.5 of its Matrox Imaging Library, showing how the Edge Finder feature-extraction module can detect wafer defects....Feinfocus (www.feinfocus.com) touted its relationship with Palomar Technologies (www.palomartechnologies.com); Palomar uses the Feinfocus FOX-160.25MFT x-ray system to inspect MEMS and RF components....Banner Engineering (www.bannerengineering.com) demonstrated a plethora of products, including retroreflective-laser, ultrasonic, true-color, and vision sensors....Edmund Industrial Optics (www.edmundoptics.com) demonstrated an inspection system that employs Edmund lenses as well as National Instruments' (www.ni.com) Compact Vision System and Vision Builder software ....Despatch Industries (www.despatch.com) demonstrated its chambers for accelerated temperature/humidity stress testing of semiconductors, and it showed its Ransco line of temperature-test and thermal-shock chambers.