Adaptive quality binning for analog circuits

Manufactured devices have a diverse performance/quality profile due to process variations. Devices with superior performance and quality are of higher value while the rest can be sold for a lower price. Separating manufactured devices according to their performance is defined as quality/performance binning and is a very effective way of lowering average device cost. In this manner, devices that have below average quality are not wasted and therefore device cost is reduced. Quality binned devices share the same design and typically go through the same manufacturing process and even the same test process. After the testing step, they are binned according to different sets of performance criteria, typically according to the customer specifications. The bin a device falls depends on the process and typically does not match the amount requested by the customers because of uncertainty (variation) of the process. In this work, we present a multi-bin quality-oriented adaptive test method that efficiently classifies the devices according to the desired quality criteria and minimizes the overall test time.