Commentary: Lower test costs start with IC design

James T. Healy, CEO of LogicVision, Inc.
(11/23/2006 9:00 AM EST), EE Times
 
What do cost of test and weather have in common? To paraphrase Mark Twain, it seems like everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. We can't do much about the weather but we can do something about test costs.

A few semiconductor industry leaders have figured out how to contain this problem by attacking test costs at the source — at the chip design level. But this perspective on cost reduction requires such a great degree of both creative thinking and corporate resolve that many businesses may find it challenging to create the necessary motivational changes to reap the reward.

Everybody agrees that cost of test is rising. At the recent International Test Conference (ITC) in Santa Clara California, Nvidia Corp.'s Chris Malachowsky said that test accounts for about 4-5 percent of the manufacturing cost. In addition, he said, yield costs, which include the costs for final testing and packaging, add an additional 5.5 percent to the total cost.

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