CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
7 November 2005
Product News
Agilent Technologies and Mentor Graphics Announce Integrated Diagnostic Solution to Speed Yield Learning in High-Volume Manufacturing Flow
Agilent Technologies Inc. and Mentor Graphics Corp. announced an integrated solution enabling high-volume diagnosis for logical and physical failure analysis in the semiconductor manufacturing test flow. The seamless integration between Agilent's 93000 Pin Scale test system and the Mentor Graphics YieldAssist diagnostics software enables fast online data collection in high-volume manufacturing.
Using this solution, manufacturers working at 90nm and below will now have integrated online diagnostic capabilities to shorten the time to production yield, with enhanced initial design debug, ongoing yield improvement, process control and quality assurance throughout the manufacturing process.
Working with a mutual customer, a leading communications semiconductor manufacturer, Agilent and Mentor Graphics have demonstrated and validated the solution on the 93000 Pin Scale tester using the Mentor Graphics YieldAssist product. The unique test-processor-per-pin architecture of the 93000 Pin Scale system enables per-pin result and failure capture capabilities, allowing diagnostic data to be filtered for relevance and captured without an increase in test time. Agilent's powerful, high-throughput data log feature, available on current Agilent 93000 releases, combined with Mentor's YieldAssist software, delivers a solution that speeds the data collection and analysis process and enables diagnosis, yield monitoring and data mining directly from production test data.
"As manufacturers go into volume production with 90nm designs and below, the initial yield ramp and the detection and isolation of design-specific systematic defects is a key challenge," said Robert Hum, vice president and general manager for the Design Verification and Test division at Mentor Graphics. "The open third-party interface of the 93000 Pin Scale system enabled smooth collaboration based on a standardized exchange format."
"This seamless solution will enhance the critical yield diagnostics capabilities needed at 90nm and below," said Pascal Ronde, vice president of Agilent's Automated Test Group. "Our efforts with Mentor Graphics are part of our ongoing work to address our customers' need for greater integration between design and manufacturing."
The overall yield learning/monitoring strategy that YieldAssist facilitates addresses the three key areas needed for a complete solution; high quality test, effective defect isolation and rapid high-volume diagnosis. The high quality manufacturing tests created with the TestKompress® or FastScanT automatic test program generation (ATPG) tools provide the foundation for improving defect detection and diagnosis. Using the failure data from manufacturing test, YieldAssist is able to isolate the cause of the failure and map it to defect suspects. A link to Mentor's Calibre® results viewing environment (RVE) allows users to view suspected defects in the physical design layout view to further isolate problems down to a physical feature. More information is available at http://www.mentor.com .
The Agilent 93000 is the industry's fastest-growing scalable platform architecture for testing systems-on-chips (SOCs) and systems-in-packages (SIPs). With more than 1,000 installed systems worldwide, the Agilent 93000 is the system of choice for subcontract manufacturers, integrated device manufacturers and fabless companies. The Agilent 93000 meets the industry's demanding performance and cost challenges, whether at-speed device characterization or high-volume production. The test system provides massive multisite capabilities, enables data rates up to 10 Gb/s and supports a full range of digital, mixed-signal and RF applications. The flexibility and performance of the Agilent 93000 provide faster time-to-market, better yields and lower overall cost-of-test. More information on the Agilent 93000 is available at http://www.agilent.com/see/soctest .
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