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Keysight's automated test equipment business is pioneering a revolution in test methodology - a revolution we call intelligent testing. Intelligent Test is a world of open systems, integrated from end-to-end across all of your manufacturing processes, from design to assembly to test to quality control. It's a world where test systems are aware of each other, and interact in a complementary way. Information flows freely, systems are synchronized, redundancies are eliminated, and products ship faster.

Intelligent Test is Keysight Technologies' overarching strategy that ties together a broad range of semiconductor test equipment with information management tools to help our customers speed products to market and reduce the overall cost of manufacturing. It encompasses three critical components - the right test platform at the lowest cost with the necessary information tools to accelerate the move from design into manufacturing while optimizing yield.

The Right Test - to find defects with speed and precision
The Right Cost - to provide the lowest cost-of test in the industry
The Power of Information - to improve the overall value of test and time-to market

The Right Test Platform

The foundation of Keysight's Intelligent Test strategy is a broad range of test platforms including parametric testers and RF, memory and system-on-a-chip test systems. Announcements made during the 2000 ITC show underscore the Intelligent Test proposition and include the Keysight V4400 Flash Memory Test System and two new low-cost models in the popular 93000 SOC Text System family.

Versatest Series Model V4400

Meeting the needs of the briskly growing Flash memory market, the V4400 enables manufacturers to speed products like MP3 players, personal digital assistants and wireless communications devices to market thanks to the unprecedented ability to test up to 36 devices in parallel. The V4400 features Keysight's flexible tester-per-site architecture and new test system optimization software which provides manufacturers higher throughput, increased parallelism and enhanced capabilities to reduce the overall cost of test.

C200e and C400e Test Systems

The C200e, and its sister the C400e, are among the lowest cost per pin SOC test systems on the market. At just $1,500 per pin, the C200e not only boasts the lowest capital cost of any SOC test system on the market, but can expand to meet a manufacturers' evolving needs for testing high complexity and high-speed devices including PC graphics, high-end DSPs, high-speed chipsets and ASICs. Additionally, both the C200e and C400e are well suited for both structural and functional testing.

4073 Parametric Tester

Other recently introduced test systems in the Keysight line include: 4073 Parametric Tester The tester, introduced at Semicon West 2000, features a newly developed Source Monitor Unit (SMU) and matrix that enable accurate evaluation of ultra-low current and voltage on wafers. The 4073 provides advanced, high-performance testing capabilities to the fast-growing 300mm wafer-manufacturing community.

84000 RFIC Test Series

The industry leader in RF and Millimeter Wave testing, Keysight's 84000 RF Test Series has been selected test system of choice by wireless communications giants such as QUALCOMM.

94000 Test System

Keysight Technologies has enabled Bluetooth application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) companies such as Silicon Wave bring designs to market faster with the 94000 Test System and Keysight's application support and test program development tools.

Today, Keysight parametric test systems are used in-process validation in the majority of the world's wafer fabs and process labs. Keysight RFIC and Millimeter-Wave Series Test Systems deliver a high-volume manufacturing solution optimized for high throughput and repeatability. Keysight's many memory test solutions are optimized for high performance RAMBUS™ RDRAM devices or for a wide variety of NVM memory devices such as Flash, EEPROM, EPROM, Mask ROM, and FPGA. Each of Keysight's three distinct product families of integrated circuit test systems have many unique features that were designed with one common goal in mind: Provide the user with a stable yet scalable integrated test solution that provides the right test capability at the right production test cost.

And, we're adding industry-standard interfaces to our systems, so they can be true "test information appliances," which will allow our customers to shorten their time-to-market while driving down the cost of test. We are making the paradigm shift to intelligent testing solutions by providing:

The Lowest Cost of Test

Today's consumers demand products that work. This means everyone involved in the manufacturing process - including IC manufacturers - must test and verify their parts. The goal of manufacturers is to try to minimize the cost of testing while improving its value to the manufacturing process by increasing yields and quality of product shipped.

Moore's Law, developed at the start of the silicon revolution some 20 years ago, dictates that chip complexity will double every 18 months. One of the biggest customer issues is that test costs are not scaling with the surprisingly accurate Moore's Law.

The true cost of test (CoT) is a function of the cost of the test flow (including equipment and resources), the amount of time the test process is running and the number of good parts identified by the test process.

CoT can be reduced by:

  1. Reducing the cost of the equipment
  2. Increasing the time the tester equipment is utilized and
  3. Increasing the number of good parts that can be accurately measured (i.e., throughput).

It is important to note that the components of cost of test are not fully independent. While it may be possible to lower test cost by purchasing an inexpensive tester, it may be unreliable and perform marginally, thereby increasing cost of test. It is important to find the optimum combination of price, reliability and throughput.

Keysight Technologies has designed several new products directly addressing reduction in the cost of test including the C200e with the lowest capital cost of ownership and the V4400 with increased throughput. In addition, Keysight offers asset utilization services and software that increase tester equipment utilization. These examples are available today to lower the cost of test.

The Power of Information

Intelligent Test leverages the Power of Information available through Keysight's semiconductor test systems to speed customers through the design stage to manufacturing breaking down the "wall" that currently exists between design and manufacturing. This will enable our customers to achieve much quicker Time-to-volume (TTV).

Keysight is linking the design world to the manufacturing world by creating partnerships with leading electronic design automation (EDA) vendors, such as our Synopsys alliance, so that ATE-aware testability is designed from the start using techniques such as boundary scan, scan, Concurrent Test, IDDQ and built-in self test (BIST). Keysight and Synopsys are the first ATE and EDA companies to work together to break down that "wall". Keysight also has a partnership with SynTest to provide Concurrent Test design consultation and implementation. Additional EDA partnerships will be announced in future.

In summary, Keysight is working with key EDA companies, customers and other partners to lower our customers' overall cost of test (COT) and increase their TTV.