Specification test compaction for analog circuits and MEMS [accelerometer and opamp examples]

Testing a non-digital integrated system against all of its specifications can be quite expensive due to the elaborate test application and measurement setup required. We propose to eliminate redundant tests by employing ε-SVM based statistical learning. The application of the proposed methodology to an operational amplifier and a MEMS accelerometer reveal that redundant tests can be statistically identified from a complete set of specification-based tests, with negligible error. Specifically, after eliminating five of eleven specification-based tests for an operational amplifier, the defect escape and yield loss is small at 0.6% and 0.9%, respectively. For the accelerometer, defect escape of 0.2% and yield loss of 0.1% occurs when the hot and cold tests are eliminated. For the accelerometer, this level of compaction would reduce test cost by more than half.