2005 ITRS: Future Test Drivers Are Defined

The Test and Test Equipment working group for the 2005 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) has outlined what it considers the key drivers for this important sector of our industry, as well as defined what it views as its more difficult challenges and future opportunities. New in this edition is the reorganization of the section that deals with Test Technology Requirements in a format that now allows it to address the growing integration of disparate chip designs — a major factor in test and test equipment developments. The working group notes that test has been shifting from a traditional defect screening and speed binning focus to reliability and yield learning. In order to determine what the impact of these challenges will be, it was decided to divide them into key drivers that more clearly define what it calls boundary conditions, within which the test operation must function satisfactorily insofar as results and costs are concerned.

The areas emphasized by the working group are device trends, increasing test process complexity and continued economic scaling of test. In the arena of Difficult Challenges, the main hurdles are seen in the sectors of test for yield learning, screening for reliability, increasing systemic defects and potential yield losses. Future Opportunities focus on test program automation, simulation and modeling, and convergence of test and system reliability solutions.

The 2005 ITRS Test and Test Equipment working group also expressed concern over the inevitable skyrocketing costs that result from the continued application to test and test instrumentation of increasingly sophisticated and expensive technologies, which are needed to cope with the endemic problems that new processes and device architectures cause the semiconductor industry with the coming of each new design node. It appears certain that some tradeoffs will become necessary in the industry's test sectors.