Encounter Test adds compression, diagnostic capabilities

July 12, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO — Market-leading EDA vendor Cadence Design Systems Inc. Wednesday (July 12) announced a new release of the company's Encounter Test product with the addition of new compression and yield diagnostics capabilities.

According to Cadence (San Jose, Calif.), the release of Encounter Test addresses the escalating cost of manufacturing silicon with expanded support for non-proprietary, on-chip exclusive-or (XOR) test data compression structures. The new compression capability enables multi-vendor interoperability between automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) and diagnostics products, Cadence said, and allows the use of a single pass diagnostic flow.

"High test coverage and solid support for multiple test data compression architectures are key requirements toward achieving our quality goals relative to cost of test and cost of product," said Raj Raina, manager of DFM/DFT methodology and Freescale Semiconductor Inc., in a statement. "We are very pleased with the addition of the latest XOR compression architecture in Encounter Test. It provides minimum design impact, exceeds our compression requirements, achieves the necessary test coverage, and supports one-pass diagnostics methodology."

Cadence said the new test capability supports input side decompression based on an XOR spreading network fan-out, while on the output side, the compression uses XOR tree compaction with optional x-state masking. This augments the on-product multiple input shift register architecture widely deployed by Cadence Encounter Test customers, the company said.

The Encounter Test Diagnostics capability has been expanded from logical domain to localization of physical structures within the design that cause yield loss, Cadence said. These structures are highlighted with a new physical browser that correlates a diagnostic callout to a net, including its metal layer and encompassing vias and contacts to help speed physical failure analysis, Cadence said.

"This new release continues Encounter Test's strong tradition of innovation and integration for delivering higher value to our customers," said Sanjiv Taneja, vice president of R&D at Cadence. "Our customers will benefit from accelerated yield ramp and lower test cost enabled through new innovations in compression and yield diagnostics embodied in this release."

The latest release of Encounter Test is available now, according to Cadence. Pricing information was not disclosed.