A seamless flow of data in both directions between design and test is vital to the future profitability and technological progress of the semiconductor industry as lower process nodes force manufacturing issues to the fore.
Sergio Perez is vice president, Business Development at Advantest America and marketing chair of the Semiconductor Test Consortium. He holds a BS in engineering from Harvey Mudd College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Fred Bode is president of Bode Enterprises and Executive director of the VXIbus Consortium, the PXI Systems Alliance, the LXI Consortium, the IVI Foundation and the Semiconductor Test Consortium. He trained as an EE at Yale, UCLA and Stanford.
The challenges presented by system-on-chip, demands for greater IC functionality, shrinking time-to-market and manufacturing at sub- 130nm process nodes are taxing all branches of the semiconductor industry. For the ATE sector, this ‘triple play’ lies at the heart of 2003’s formation of the Semiconductor Test Consortium (STC).
Largely customer-driven, it is a response to three concerns that emerge directly from today’s competitive environment and which are shared by companies such as Intel, Philips, Toshiba, Renesas, Fujitsu, Matsushita, Analog Devices and TSMC – the kind of companies which, when they speak in concert, tend to make people listen:
are required.