ATE system level calibration and its impact on cost, quality and schedule

It has been shown that ATE systems which are targeted at families of products can have a significant positive impact on the cost of test and capacity availability. In addition it has been shown that the quality (accuracy and repeatability) of the test system reduces the overall cost of test and rework. The historical challenge has been that test systems are traditionally targeted at an individual product and thus have acceptance criteria constrained to that individual product specification and not the performance envelope of the tester. This has two major unintended consequences when a test station is intended to be used for more than one product. First, the system specifications are typically developed around a “golden unit” methodology. Second, the specifications are not easily extended to other products of a similar type. In this paper we will propose an alternative method to provide system level specification and system measurement plane calibration which will extend the system's ability to be used for multiple products. This approach is measurement-centric, not device specification-centric. This philosophy has several major impacts on the cost, quality and schedule.