Silicon Diagnosis

Silicon diagnosis is used to locate silicon defects inside faulty chips. During the life cycle of silicon devices, silicon diagnosis is used mainly at three stages. At first silicon debug stage, the focus is to locate design errors. The goal is to reduce time to market. At early yield rampup stage, the focus is to locate design margin and manufacture process margin problems. The goal is to reduce time to volume. At later yield improvement stage, the focus is to locate system defects and process problems. The goal is to improve the yield. Time to market, time to volume and yield improvement all have significant impact to the chip profitability. Therefore, silicon diagnosis has direct impact to profitability.