Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Wafer level testing and digging into details

Over the past 4-5 years part of my job has been testing devices at the wafer level. Before that I was a complete novice to that type of testing, so I was then, and still am, on the lookout for wafer probing information.

I had a few minutes yesterday to glance through Test & Measurement World and saw an article detailing some of the recent history of wafer testing [this is part 3, so follow the links to read parts 1 & 2]. It was really pretty interesting. Of course, if you have no involvement with chip testing your eyes may glaze over.

Last night I had time to dig into the article more. The author mentioned a presentation made by Vikas Sharma at the 2007 IEEE Semiconductor Wafer Test Workshop. So I navigated over to archives for this past June and found the entire presentation. Even more, there were several other presentations there that I can use. Yes, most of those engineers are probing logic chips and testing things much more complicated than what I do, but parts of it are still applicable.

In a post a few weeks ago I talked about the need to lift your head and look around you once in a while. What I did last night is a prime example of this. Sometimes you never know what you'll find, and there is a certain satisfaction to be gained from discovering a little nugget of treasure.

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