Yield Learning: Ask the Application Engineer

| IN THIS ISSUE |

Briefing: ATPG compression has been around for awhile but its inner workings are still not well understood,
and that has led to confusion.

Tech Paper: Why have yields fallen so dramatically at the 90nm and what can design and test teams do to fix it?

ViewPoint: An unprecedented level of industry cooperation is required between design, test and manufacturing to bridge the yield gap.

Ask the Apps Engineer: The pros, cons and tradeoffs of dealing with AWT and SWT memories when using LogicVision tools.

Test Topics: Al Crouch of Inovys provides insight into the dos and don'ts of scan chain testing in this article from Electronic Device Failure Analysis magazine.

Honored by ITC: A Multi-Frequency Scan-based BIST Method

A Complete Design Solution for Structured ASICS

15 Minutes of Fame

:: Ask the Application Engineer

Answers: Testing AWT and SWT memory

Using even the most advanced technologies involves tradeoffs. This is as true in yield management as in any other area of the semiconductor industry. Tradeoffs require risk assessment and risk can be minimized by a thorough understanding of the test process and the functionality being tested.

A good example in the test area is the use of Asynchronous Write Through (AWT) mode and Synchronous Write Through (SWT) mode memories. Testing them can be an interesting challenge. To help designers and test engineers using LogicVision's embedded test solutions, LogicVision has written an applications brief on the subject. It's a must read if they are using AWT or SWT memories with LogicVision tools.

Click for the Applications Brief in PDF format

15 Minutes of Fame

The Yield Learning Report publishes new articles and links to previously published articles and white papers of general interest to the yield management community.

If you would like to contribute an article, be interviewed for an article in Q&A format for our Strategically Speaking section, or suggest a valuable article or white paper we can link to, just email our editor, Jack Shandle.