Do Chips Really Work The First Time?

By _Semiconductor Engineering

February 13, 2014

There’s no longer survey data on respins, but there are certainly a lot of new problems to contend with—and some new ways of looking at those problems.

The industry used to have survey data that showed the number of respins required for a broad swath of designs and the principle causes of those respins. That was a good indicator of where tools or processes needed to be improved. At the time, the data showed that the primary cause of respins was functional errors, and since then EDA vendors have been beefing up tools in that area.

Most of the available data is now 10 years old and new data does not appear to be forthcoming. Perhaps the data is so valuable that it doesn’t get circulated, or perhaps nobody is willing to admit their chips are not perfect the first time around, even though surveys are anonymous.