If It´s All about Yield, Why Talk about Testing?

This talk will discuss the evolution of test and diagnosis, in the broad sense, over the recent years as well as the outlook into the future. Test, as it was only recently a pure discriminator between good and bad, has gained significant more added value by acting also a feedback loop towards the manufacturing process of integrated circuits. Of course, this feedback loop was already there, but was limited to information on test bin level from a tester. In the last couple of years, this has changed dramatically, and we are now able to pinpoint to circuit coordinates and/or to circuit structures as potential candidates for low yield causes. By linking this diagnosis information to in-line data, a more than direct link to a root cause in the fab can be achieved. And this is not the end of the story. By linking diagnosis to the layout one should be able to even stronger and quicker close the loop between Design, Manufacturing and Test. All of the above will be discussed in the talk, which in a sense could mean that the talk is all about DfX, Design for excellence ...