Using System-like ATE to Improve the IC Design Verification

Abstract

Identifying design problems as early in design cycle as possible is very critical to complete the IC design project on time and within budget. Most people today are using bench instruments, like spectrum analyzer, to validate their design in system level. These instruments are easy to setup but lack of data processing capability. On the other hand, ATE is very powerful at data collection and analysis, e.g. shmoo, data capture, and automatic test. But it's not easy to do system-like test on ATE. This paper will introduce a new solution to do system-like test on ATE, which is cost effective, and simplify the test programming on ATE. With this solution, design and verification engineer can work together to setup system-like test environment on ATE within several days, which can greatly improve the design verification efficiency and time to market.