Focus on the Future with KTA

Kinesys Test Advantage offers insight into trends and technology within the TAP Semiconductor Industry.

It is clear that new innovative manufacturing methodologies must be applied during the back-end wafer sort, final test, and assembly processes in order to enable reduced manufacturing costs while continuing to improve outgoing device quality.

 While wafer sort is focused on testing device yield to specification, advanced statistical post processing methodologies compliment this process with testing yield based on wafer fabrication and assembly process performance. Combine the strengths of these data sets along with end to end single device traceability throughout the backend manufacturing process and you have an adaptive test opportunity to improve device manufacturing costs and at the same time improve device quality.

Device Traceability throughout the back-end process from wafer parametric test through final test now provides a backbone to facilitate correlations between the advanced statistical post processing data and all subsequent process steps in order to optimize equipment utilization and improve device quality. 

Without single device tracking, such correlation and process flow management rests on the historical analysis of wafer/lot based statistics and potentially complex dedicated algorithms which translate to both quality risks and unnecessary production cost overheads. When multi-flow device disposition analysis and single device tracking converge, advanced correlations between process flow steps enable real time correlated device disposition decisions based on substantiated analysis results at each process intercept.
Another important benefit offered by the single device tracking is the ability to pin-point the devices to be recalled in the case of a field failure (see “Intelligent not Total Recall” – KGD 2008).
Adaptive test strategies can be deployed in conjunction with single device tracking to simultaneously drive down manufacturing costs and enable correlated device disposition analysis results to improve quality of shipped parts. Such technology is all the more important in the area of TRUSTED IC’s and KTA believes that such a complete and integrated solution is the future and backbone of cyber security.