TABLE OF CONTENTS The design and production of the majority of manufactured products usually involves a rigorous design activity followed by detailed testing and evaluation of prototypes before volume production is begun. Once in production, continuous quality control of components and assembly is desirable, but comprehensive testing of each finished item is not usually affordable. However, the more sophisticated the product, or the components used within the product, then the more need there will be to try to ensure that the end product is fully functional. The ability to test end products as comprehensively as possible within a given budget or time constraint is therefore a universal problem.
Electronics, and here more specifically microelectronics, has the fundamental feature that, in contrast to mechanical and electromechanical devices, visual inspection is of very little use. Parametric or functional testing must be used. The range of testing involves both the IC manufacturer and the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), in total including the following principal activities:
tests by the IC manufacturer (vendor) to ensure that all the fabrication steps have been correctly implemented during wafer manufacture (IC fabrication checks);
tests to ensure that prototype ICs perform correctly in all respects (IC design checks);
tests to ensure that subsequent production ICs are defect free (IC production checks);
possibly tests by the OEM of incoming ICs to confirm their functionality (acceptance tests);
tests by the OEM of final manufactured products (product tests).
The first of these five activities is the sole province of the...
