Enabling High Throughput and Low Cost of Test for Analog Baseband Processors

By Mandy Davis, Business Development Manager, Advantest America

Analog baseband processors are communications workhorses. Digital processing streams must be manipulated into analog for amplitude, requiring they be encoded into a form suitable for transmission. The analog baseband processor tackles this encoding, converting the signal before it’s fed into a multiplexer that will place the baseband signal onto a relevant transmission channel.

Because they do so much heavy lifting, analog baseband processors require various types of function blocks. As chip integration has grown higher, so has the required performance for each block, e.g., processing speed of the microprocessor, bandwidth of the converters, etc. Some typical analog IP blocks include Transmit DACs (digital-to-analog converters), Receive ADCs (analog-to-digital converters), Audio DACs and Audio ADCs.

The Wave Scale Mixed-Signal High-Speed (WSMX HS) card, designed for use with the V93000 test platform, is Advantest’s next-generation analog card. Developed to address the requirements of these high-performance devices, the card contains both digitizers and arbitrary waveform generators (AWGs). It’s optimized for the latest baseband modulation schemes and is ready for 4G and 5G communication standards. To provide even more flexibility, WSMX can be used in combination with Advantest’s Wave Scale RF (WSRF) card, digital card, and Device Power Supply (DPS) card to address a broad range of applications, including RF, baseband processors and high-speed DACs and ADCs (see Figure 1).

The WSMX card uses the same type of per-pin architecture as the company’s other V93000 channel cards. None of the resources are shared, and all instruments are controlled in parallel and independently by the test processor, enabling faster test times. With 16 units per card that can be used as an AWG or digitizer, WSMX provides up to 32 instruments in a single card. This high density allows for increased multi-site test without requiring more cards to be added – in turn, contributing to lower test costs. Moreover, the card is scalable and licensable for as few as four units or as many as 16; therefore, the user doesn’t need to pay for all of the units if not all are required.

Measurement parameters for the WSMX card are among the best available in the industry, including a sample rate of 500 Megasamples per second (Msps) and bandwidth of up to 200MHz for the AWG, and a sample rate of 250Msps and bandwidth up to 300MHz for the digitizer. The WSMX card also includes a parametric measurement unit (PMU) per pin, for a total of 64 PMUs per card. With its per-pin PMU of ±3mV voltage accuracy and ±20nA current accuracy, the WSMX card provides all the performance necessary for DC measurements. It also includes a built-in flexible I/O matrix, so all functionality is available behind every pogo – each pin can operate as a PMU, AWG, or digitizer.

To summarize, the Wave Scale MX card tests analog baseband interfaces and high-speed DACs and ADCs, utilizing:

• 32 full independent instruments for true parallel mixed-signal test
• Test processor-controlled functionality
• Precise synchronization with all other resources in the tester
• Very high density with uncompromised mixed-signal test in the smallest infrastructure

As a result, WSMX delivers very high throughput and low test costs, while providing the high performance essential to analog/mixed-signal applications and high degree of scalability and flexibility for which the V93000 test platform is known.

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Advantest Introduces Products for the “Connected World” at SEMICON West 2016

Advantest participated in the annual SEMICON West show at San Francisco’s Moscone Center from July 12-14, 2016, showcasing a broad spectrum of semiconductor test solutions and highlighting a number of new product introductions.  Under the theme, Measure the Connected World … and everything in it, Advantest debuted three new modules for the V93000 single scalable platform.  The new Wave Scale RF and Wave Scale MX cards enable the V93000 to achieve unprecedented levels of parallelism and throughput in testing radio-frequency (RF) and mixed-signal ICs for wireless communications, reducing both the cost of test and time to market.  Additionally, the DC Scale AVI64 universal analog pin module gives the V93000 platform the industry’s broadest capabilities for testing power and analog ICs used in mobile applications.

In its booth, Advantest also highlighted two SoC test solutions – the highly flexible T2000 platform, which gives customers access to high-volume markets with minimal investment, and the EVA100 tester for digital and analog testing of small-pin-count semiconductors.

For customers in the memory IC market, Advantest displayed the high-productivity T5830 memory tester, offering low cost of test for virtually any Flash memory.

A large digital display featured the HA1000 die-level handler for probing individual dies, unpackaged 3D stacks and 2.5D devices.

To meet the needs of the growing solid-state drive (SSD) market, Advantest showcased its MPT3000 system, designed for rapid development and production ramp up of SSD designs.

In addition, Advantest showcased other offerings including the company’s TAS product family of terahertz analysis systems that enable spectroscopic imaging and measurements; nanotechnology E-beam lithography for nano-patterning and MVM-SEM® for nano-scale measurement; the EM360 dashboard, enabling complete test-floor management and planning; the M6245 and M4871 handlers that boost testing productivity; Advantest’s innovative CloudTesting™ Service for on-demand testing; and specialty products such as the MicroLTE portable test system and SmartBox™, a diagnostic test solution for mobile communication devices from W2BI, Inc., an Advantest Group company.

Advantest technologists were also active in technical sessions during SEMICON West. In the Test Vision 2020 program, Derek Floyd presented his paper on “New ATE Solutions for Upcoming Analog Test,” and Dave Armstrong discussed how “Thermal Testing of Singulated Devices Gets Us Closer to Known-Good Die/Stack.”  During the technical session on Analog and New Frontiers, Advantest’s Takahiro Nakajima spoke on “Test Challenges for Future Automotive 100M/1Gbps Ethernet PHY.”

Flexible, Massively Parallel RF Device Testing Is Here

By Adrian Kwan, Business Development Manager, Advantest America

Today’s interconnected world provides great conveniences and many opportunities for staying in touch with family, friends and colleagues – not to mention our physical environment and our own health. Our daily lives are replete with smartphones, tablets, cameras, RFID tags, and wearable/sensor-driven devices – all of which require semiconductor ICs to perform to specification. In the wearables category alone, industry estimates project an annual $5-8 billion demand for ICs to supply this market, driven by requirements for low power, connectivity, sensors, and touch and voice interfaces.

All of these devices are connected through a variety of wireless standards: LTE, LTE-Advanced and LTE-A Pro smartphone standards, as well as LTE-M, WLAN, GPS, ZigBee and Bluetooth. This surfeit of standards creates technological complexities, as these wireless technologies – many of which are enabling the Internet of Things (IoT) – have unique requirements and performance criteria that differ depending upon the application. In addition, while 3G/4G LTE technology currently drives the majority of cellular data traffic and covers the most frequencies, 5G is lurking on the horizon and will bring new production challenges.

Devices based on all of these wireless technologies must be fully tested and characterized before they can be brought to market. This makes flexibility and scalability of automated test equipment (ATE) a fundamental requirement. Advantest is answering this demand with new offerings specifically developed to accommodate the testing demands associated with current and emerging RF chips.

Advantest’s Wave Scale™ generation of channel cards for the V93000 “universal pin” test platform represents a paradigm shift in testing RF and mixed-signal devices, delivering unprecedented levels of parallelism and throughput unmatched by other solutions.  The V93000 Wave Scale RF and V93000 Wave Scale MX cards substantially reduce the cost of test and time to market for RF semiconductors while creating a path for testing future 5G devices.

Current RF testing solutions, which typically require multiple cards plus a separate calibration kit, have employed a fan-out architecture in which subsystem resources are shared. This means that devices with multiple frequency paths are actually tested in serial within the device, rather than in true parallel mission mode testing. It also means that only one RF standard can be tested at a time per site. The V93000 Wave Scale RF condenses four independent RF subsystems into one fully integrated instrument with massive parallelism – as many as 32 ports on each unit, with up 6 units in each system provides the flexibility of up to 192 ports for parallel testing of multiple RF device types. This is enabled via in-site parallelism, in which shared resources are omitted, thus removing the limitations placed on test speedup by other RF test solutions.

Wave Scale RF and corresponding Wave Scale MX cards can simultaneously test multiple standards or multiple paths within each RF device, achieving both in-site parallelism and high multi-site efficiency. Devices can be tested 2-3x faster than with prior solutions – significantly reducing the cost of test. This is a key requirement for OEMs and fabless semiconductor companies needing to get volume RF-enabled devices to market as quickly as possible.

Both Wave Scale RF and Wave Scale MX feature built-in calibration, and both are water-cooled at the pin electronics level to maintain consistent temperature across all pins. The Wave Scale MX high-speed card is optimized for analog IQ baseband applications and testing of high-speed DACs and ADCs. As with Wave Scale RF, Wave Scale MX omits shared resources, delivering parallel, independent operation of all 32 instruments controlled by a hardware sequencer.

Device integration, market segmentation and performance improvements are the inevitable result of consumer demands for more capability, convenience and mobility. Advantest is leading the way for next-generation RF ATE with its new V93000 Wave Scale solutions, designed to simultaneously support the diverse performance and economic needs of new RF device standards.

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Testing Ultra-Fast Memories…Ultra Fast

By Ken Hanh Lai, Director of Memory Marketing, Memory Business Development

Advanced high-speed test is becoming increasingly important as ultra-fast memory ICs are integrated into a greater number of end products. High-speed memory test systems need to accommodate this trend and offer advanced memory test capabilities for such high-speed ICs. One key category of high-speed memories is GDDR5 (graphics double data rate memory), designed for use in graphics cards, game consoles, and high-performance computational products. These devices include a high-speed parallel data bus that operates at around 8 gigabits per second (Gbps) today and is targeted to go up to 16 Gbps in the future (GDDR5X, GDDR6).

Other fast memory ICs operate using high-speed serial interfaces. Often, a serial bus can be operated at higher overall data rates than a parallel bus because a serial bus inherently has no timing skew or crosstalk. Examples of this include Universal Serial Bus (USB) and PCI Express (PCIe).  The benefits of these implementations include cost-effective, lower-pin-count designs.

These new memory test challenges are being addressed by the new HSM16G, a fully integrated memory test card recently introduced by Advantest (Figure 1). The card extends the high-speed testing capabilities of the company’s V93000 HSM series of testers to native 16 Gbps for at-speed testing of ultra-fast memory ICs. The card provides 32 channels, which are set up as 8 differential receive (RX) and transmit (TX) lines in the 16-Gbps operation mode. Additionally, the card can be switched to two lower-speed operating modes: an HSM8G-compatible operating mode for up to 8-Gbps operation and a 32-channel I/O base mode for up to 1.8-Gbps operation.

Figure 1.  Advantest HSM16G card for ultra-fast-memory test.

The V93000 HSM Series with the HSM16G card provides ultra high-speed memory test capabilities in a cost-effective, small-footprint tester, making it well suited for engineering, design verification, and characterization. Other, less-fast testers have to perform complex multiplexing using lower speed channels  with add-on solutions to reach the speeds needed to test future GDDR5 and other high-speed devices. Because of the subsequent multiplexing, algorithmic pattern generation (APG) is significantly restricted, and only a limited feature set is available for characterization and debugging. The HSM16G card avoids these constraints thanks to its native 16-Gbps speed.

The new card features comprehensive measurement capabilities, including per-pin algorithmic pattern generation to test any kind of fault algorithm and fail bitmap capture. Programmable equalization allows for cable-loss compensation and rise-time control to support the highest signal integrity. A precision per-pin clock with less than 1 picosecond (ps) jitter enables the industry’s most accurate jitter measurements. Further capabilities that set the HSM16G apart are its per-pin-based arbitrary jitter modulation for device characterization and stress test, as well as a set of integrated analysis tools. Key volume-production features include per-pin embedded searches for rapid alignment to the center of the data eye, fast eye measurements to screen for both eye height and eye width, and an integrated time measurement unit (TMU) for accurate jitter measurements.

For memory ICs with serial bus interfaces such as PCIe and Universal Flash Storage (UFS), the HSM16G card offers comprehensive physical layer test (PHY characterization). This enables the card to cover all memory devices with high-speed serial interfaces or high-speed parallel memory buses.

Fully compatible with the V93000 HSM series’ hardware and software, the HSM16G card can be factory installed or retrofit onto a customer’s installed tester base. It enables reuse of existing test programs for HSM testers, with minimal adaptation, letting customers quickly set up the new card and get to work.

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Advantest Achieves Top 30 Ranking from Green Power Partners

Continuing Advantest America, Inc.’s commitment to conducting its business in a manner that delivers leading environmental, health and safety performance, AAI is very proud to have entered its 5th year having earned a spot on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Top 30 Tech & Telecom list, which ranks the country’s largest green power users in this sector.  A new web tool from the EPA shows Advantest America (currently 27th) as well as the other Green Power Partners on the list.

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Green Partner Power Partner Map

Advantest Ranks Among 10 BEST Large Chip Equipment Suppliers for 28th Year Running

Leading industry analyst firm VLSIresearch Inc recently released the results of its annual Customer Satisfaction Survey ranking the 10 BEST Large Suppliers of Chip Making Equipment. For the 28^th consecutive year, Advantest was named to the coveted list, achieving the #2 spot and increasing its overall satisfaction rating to 9.12 (out of 10). The company has seen continual improvement in this rating for each of the past six years, and it earned scores of 9 or more in 13 of the 15 categories included in the survey.

A white paper issued by VLSIresearch details Advantest’s survey results – including the firm’s assessment of Advantest’s successful approach to customer satisfaction.

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