The impact of outsourcing on test

With outsourcing test and parts of the design, it is critical to recognize that some accustomed skills and advantages will be forced obsolete, and new ones need to be created. Fast diagnosis is an example of the latter. For some chips, outsourced IP and the host chip target the same new process. For volume ramp, it is likely that a complicated IP block will share the same yield (and even turn-on) issues as the host core. Now, however, complete details of the IP may not be known. A simple example is a netlist understood by the user's gate-level diagnosis package. Cooperation with the supplier will be needed. This, however, may be cumbersome. Strong diagnosis capability is also needed for when targeting early access of a new external fabrication process. Essentially, lowered access to real fab-data can force the user to design with successively refined approximations. As artwork release may precede or coincide with process-model stability, testing of skew wafer lots may be needed to verify the design and predict yield. Should errors occur, the speed and precision of diagnosis and repair will determine the success of the early access plan.