Testing the IBM Power 7™ 4 GHz eight core microprocessor

The IBM Power 7™ 4 GHz, eight core microprocessor introduced several new challenges for the Power 7 test team: new pervasive test architecture, 8 asynchronous processor cores, DRAM integrated on the same die as processor and enhanced thermal test requirements. The design complexity, time to market schedule compression, and rapid production ramp required innovation and new methods to meet these challenges. The following is an overview of the design for test architecture, manufacturing test methodology, thermal calibration, and rapid yield learning deployed to address these challenges and deliver a leadership server processor.