The Study And Practice Of Integrated Circuit Test Platform Conversion

The cost of IC test have not add additional value in the final product, but it's will be 60% of overall packaging and test cost . Most of Semiconductor manufacturer try their best to improve the tester utilization and minimize the test time in order to save the cost and beat the competitors. The most effective method to improve the utilization is to make sure the order can meet the tester utilization, but the life cycle of each IC is different, from 1 to 10 year,even 20 years, this knid of unbalanced order will induce some testers idle or over capacity. So some products need to be converted test platform to balance the tester capacity and improve the tester utilization.Base on the software and hardware analysis of LTX77 and LTX tester system and evaluation of Freescale current tester platforms, Teradyne A585 and iFlex tester platforms are chosed as the target tester platforms, also 2 devices (PCU03: LTX77 ->A585& MC34118: LTX->iFlex) are chosed as target devices for conversion. This paper is focus on the conversion of tester hardware and software,test load board redesign(redesign the schematics and PCB by Protel) and test program redesign. We have successfully finished evaluation ,analysis and study and conver 2 devices to new tester platform.. If the new test solution can get approval from customer and market business group, 3-4 LTX testers and 2 million US dollar can be saved, the test platform conversion have great value in semiconductor test industry.