A comprehensive production test solution for 1.5Gb/s and 3Gb/s serial-ATA - based on AWG and undersampling techniques

The recent deployment of GHz serial interfaces on computer hard drives (HD) includes serial-ATA (SATA), aerial-attached-SCSI (SAS), and fiber channel (FC). SOCs for hard drives embedded with read channel and SATA typically have extremely high production volumes, large analog content, high profit margin pressure, and low defect rate requirements. Therefore the production test to cover the analog content has to be very comprehensive as well as cost/test-time efficient. In this paper, we present a comprehensive SATA test solution based on a commercially available 6 giga-sample-per-second AWG and a high bandwidth undersampler integrated on ATE. The same instruments are also designed and used for high speed read channel testing. We demonstrate that, with some proper frequency domain equalization techniques, these instruments can provide the accuracy and high throughput for 3Gb/s SATA and SAS production testing. The test list is very comprehensive, including more advanced tests such as at-speed functional, at-speed input sensitivity, transmitter jitter decomposition, and jitter tolerance test