An Integrated Framework for At-Speed and ATE-Driven Delay Test of Contract-Manufactured ASICs

In contract manufacturing, the circuit netlist is owned by the ASIC customer. The manufacturer is required to work strictly within the design structure established by the customer. To manufacture high-quality components in this environment, it is critical to meet the customer´s mandated quality and performance criteria, while minimizing hardware overhead and introducing little or no design change. In this paper, the authors present a test framework for contract-manufactured ASICs using low-cost testers. Key aspects of the framework are low hardware overhead, significant savings in test data volume and test cost, and tight integration of the at-speed and ATE-driven test components to the design and manufacturing process.