Remote Labs for Industrial IC Testing

This paper deals with the remote access to an Integrated Circuits (ICs) Automated Test Equipment (ATE) for both educational and engineering purposes. This experience was initiated in 1998 in the context of a French network (CNFM) in order to provide a distant control to industrial equipment to academic and industrial people. The actual shared resource is a Verigy V93K System-on-Chip (SoC) tester platform. The cost of such equipment is close to 1 million dollar, without taking into account the maintenance and attached human resources expenses to make it work properly daily. Although the sharing of such equipments seems to be obvious for education, the French experience is quite a unique example in the world. The paper introduces the context of industrial IC testing and justifies the introduction of labs in Electrical Engineering curricula. Practical information regarding IC testing and network setup for remote access are detailed, together with lab contents.