Issues and Challenges of Testing Modern Low Voltage Devices with Conventional In-Circuit Testers

نویسنده

  • Alan J. Albee
چکیده

The popularity of low voltage technologies has grown significantly over the last decade as semiconductor device manufacturers have moved to satisfy market demands for more powerful products, smaller packaging, and longer battery life. By shrinking the size of the features they etch into semiconductor dice, IC manufacturers achieve lower costs, while improving speed and building in more functionality. However, this move toward smaller features has lead to lower breakdown voltages and increased opportunities for component overstress and false failures during in-circuit test. The chief reason is that testers designed for boards that traditionally operated with a power supply voltage of 5V are still being used on new generation ICs, which operate on 2.5V, 1.5V, or even 0.8V. These traditional in-circuit testers often do not have the accuracy, safety, and reliability features that are required to test low voltage technologies. This paper discusses the challenges of performing powered-up vector testing of low voltage technologies on traditional incircuit testers and describes the safeguards that are necessary to ensure that test vectors do not violate the increasingly tight specifications of low voltage parts. It also describes the in-circuit test features that are most important for testing low voltage technologies: independently programmable, high accuracy driver/sensors; real time dynamic backdrive current measurement, programmable backdrive control, specialized digital controller; and multiple level digital isolation. Introduction Low Voltage semiconductor devices have design benefits that include lower power consumption, reduced cooling requirements, and faster processing speeds. These benefits have made it possible for the performance of the PC to increase over 400-fold in the past 18 years, even though the energy consumed by the PC has remained largely unchanged. [1] The use of 5V VCC had long been the standard for both core and memory logic. However, the increasing complexity and functionality of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), microprocessors, and digital signal processors (DSPs), have resulted in modern CMOS manufacturing processes that produce smaller structures where the thickness of the gate oxide of each single transistor is sensitive to electrostatic field strength. Because the field strength is proportional to the supply voltage, the supply voltage must be reduced for reliable operation of the smaller structures. Put another way, making electronic devices more complex, without enlarging the overall size of the chip area, requires reducing the structure size, which also requires reducing the VCC power supply voltage. The limit for reliable operation at less than 5V is reached at a structure size of 0.6 micron, and the use of a 0.35-micron manufacturing process requires 2.5V VCC for proper operation. Reducing the power supply voltage also produces an exponential decrease in power consumption; therefore, the trend is to reduce power-supply voltages. [2] The technology roadmaps of the major semiconductor manufacturers show that logic voltage thresholds have been steadily declining over the past decade. Figure 1 shows the progression of low voltage components introduced by Texas Instruments over the last decade from 5V to 3.3V to 2.5V, all the way to 0.8V. It also shows that the majority of their low voltage components fall into the Introduction and Growth product life categories, while their higher voltage components generally fall into the Maturity and Decline product life categories.

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تاریخ انتشار 2004