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The Holy Grail of ATE?
An announcement at this year’s Semicon West in San Jose, the premier American conference for the semiconductor industry, stirred up some interesting discussion on this not-really-new concept. Advantest America announced the formation of the Semiconductor Test Consortium (STC), an organization geared toward ATE vendors and instrument manufacturers dedicated to reducing the cost of test. The goal of the consortium is to develop an open-architecture test platform consisting of a standard interface that accepts various plug-in modules from multiple suppliers configured to perform particular test functions. The impetus behind the STC is based on an ATE Open Architecture Initiative from Intel outlining the requirements for the platform. It must be flexible, modular in both hardware and software, and scalable and perform efficiently in a high-volume manufacturing environment. As stated by Nick Konidaris, president and CEO of Advantest America, the open architecture will consist of a standard skeleton or backbone with sockets in which modules from virtually any ATE supplier can be inserted to create a test system. Any module designed by any company must be fully interoperable on the platform. The architecture will be structured so ATE companies can incorporate intellectual property for specific leading-edge solutions. The highly competitive nature of the ATE business casts doubts on vendors eagerly rushing to sign on the dotted line. Cooperation has not been a key undertaking of these companies in the past. Now they are going to band together, presumably without a thought of capturing or maintaining market share, and work together on a common platform architecture. Since day one, it has been all about competitive advantage. Will these companies be able to put aside their differences and function as a truly focused consortium? Only time will tell. Unprecedented cooperation among the test-system leaders is the only way this initiative is ever going to get off the ground. Only with the solid support, both technically and financially, of the ATE suppliers will this program be successful. Currently, no major ATE vendor other than Advantest has signed on with the STS. With powerful Intel calling the plays from the sidelines for all to work toward a common architecture, the chances of the STS achieving some measure of success remain optimistic indeed. Paul Milo Return to EE Home Page Published by EE-Evaluation
Engineering |
When it comes to ICs and, in particular, today’s SOCs, the discussion among semiconductor manufacturers invariably turns to the topic of test. The cost of testing complex ICs and SOCs has reached the point where chip manufacturers, such as Intel Corporation, are telling test-equipment vendors that they no longer can continue business as usual. Test systems are too expensive, there are too many models offered by multiple vendors from which to choose, and all the systems have proprietary architectures. Intel wants a change to open-architecture ATE.