Are the IC guys helping or hindering board test?

Abstract

With the erosion of printed circuit board test points, a shift to high density interconnect (HDI) and continuing requirements that involve signal integrity verification of high-speed routes, board test is becoming much more complex. Assistance from embedded instruments in the ICs at board level test and multi-vendor embedded instrument access and solutions are becoming critical. In particular, to verify the board runs at-speed and to compensate for the loss of structural test capability, built-in IC-to-IC tests using embedded instruments will become a must. Many ICs already use these instruments for IC level testing, however their function needs to be extended for re-use at board-level test. However, a potential roadblock to this is that IC providers frequently make these instruments proprietary, often with custom functions and access. Can agreement be reached on providing functions and open access, that can be transferred by documentation from the IC design community to manufacturing board test? This requires IC design, IC test, and board design and test engineers to work closely together to agree on the function and features of the test instruments. The board engineers know they need something, but possibly do not know what is available or they address the IC design requirements too late in the game! The objectives of the panel are as follows: — To increase awareness of the IC design and test communities that assistance from embedded instruments in ICs and multi-vendor embedded instrument access and solutions are critical to the future success of board test. — Discuss the industry acceptance to re-use applicable IC instruments at board level test, as well as argue the potential pros and cons of open instrument access. — Provide opinions on designing standardized instruments in ICs, with the intent of passing the information on to customers, as well as adding board design and manufacturing test requirements to IC design, test, verification and characterization.