ATE industry standing on the tracks of the IC Express Train
Waiting to be run-over.
Quotes from speakers and Journalist at the International Test Conference, September 1999
Ned Barnholt, chief executive officer of Agilent: "We have reached the point where we have to ask if all of the SoCs that we can design can be tested cost-effectively. The answer, I'm afraid is daunting. .... mixed signal test equipment, particularity for the kind of parametric testing needed to really wring out analog circuits, remains expensive and ponderous."
G.Dan Hutcheson, president of VLSI Research: "Much of existing tester technology is no longer useful for the emerging generation of designs. "
Mark Allison, vice president of IMS: "... much of the test capacity in the industry is on legacy equipment with a cutoff frequency under a few hundred megahertz."
Ron Wilson, editor of EETimes, reporting: "Indeed, we may be evolving beyond the current leading edge generation of so-called tester-per-pin systems to a new model in which tester-pin electronics and control circuitry are present in the SoC chip itself. (BIST) That may be, in the intermediate, the only way to prevent test monsters from eating SoC projects alive."
Dan Strassberg, T&M editor of EDN, reporting: "Much to the dismay of IC manufacturers, the cost of test represents an increasing portion of total cost. For some complex chips, test cost now approaches half the total cost."
Pat Gelsinger, vice president, Intel, (keynote speaker at the conference):
"In a world of gigahertz clocks, speeds have increased 100-fold since 1987, but tester edge placement accuracy has improved only tenfold. The result is increased yield loss due to tester limitation. Without new approaches, this problem will only worsen as clock speeds increase. . . . . . the IC industry wants to work with the ATE vendors to reduce the cost of test. However, if ATE companies don't meet the challenge, a new industry will develop to take the place of the current vendors." ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Because the IC-industry is generally seen as the major driving force for the Worlds economy, here is what the management of the ATE industry has concluded: (You can blame either greed, or the small size of reptilian brains, --- take your choice.) ----------- Key Note address at the <International Test Conference>, Sept. 1999. VP Pat Gelsinger, Intel. Starting page 4.