Salland Engineering developed a fast Ethernet Tester Interface Protocol, SETIP
Salland Engineering, a leading supplier of Test Applications support and Tester Enhancement products & tools for the semiconductor industry, announced today a faster Ethernet communication interface between Testers and Probers. This interface has been used as part of an applications solution available for Teradyne INTEGRA J750 and FLEX test systems.
Today everyone is talking about cost reduction and Test Cell Integration. Salland Engineering asked the question "Is it possible to create a faster Tester to Prober interface by using standard network communication?'' The answer was a definite "Yes!"
Normally Testers use TTL, RS232 or GPIB communication methods to communicate with the Prober. The standard TTL interface is fast but cannot be used to do proper multisite testing and obtain the XY coordinates. If multisite testing is being used, the tester must know which sites are valid test sites. For each tested device/die, a bin result code must be sent to the Prober. Normally this is done with the End of Test (EOT) command. The tester has to send bind codes for each tested device/die with the EOT command. Because TTL does not support this, the tester handler interface has to be RS232 or GPIB. GPIB is faster than RS232, so it is preferable to use GPIB. However, GPIB is more difficult to implement than RS232. In addition, GPIB is not supported by all probers.
Nowadays multisite testing is being used more often to increase throughput. More testers are capable of doing parallel testing. The relatively slow RS232 and GPIB communication can take a large percentage of the total time per device. Benchmarks have shown that the Salland SETIP connection is faster than a GPIB interface. (Physical speed; Ethernet: 10/100Mbit compared to GPIB: 1Mbyte). In addition to this, lower costs, user friendliness and flexibility of a Ethernet connection is much better compared to GPIB, especially for multisite testing.
SETIP uses standard sockets to communicate between the tester and the prober. Sockets are available on the Windows platform, UNIX platform and Linux platform. At Salland Engineering we have based our implementation on TCP/IP connection over standard Ethernet networks. This means that SETIP can work with the existing tester network, a dedicated network, or any other standard corporate network that is available.
SETIP is one of the features of SE-Probe our Real time wafermapping and prober control system. This system can lead to significant probe time reduction (up to 90%).
Salland Engineering will support the SETIP protocol for the Teradyne INTEGRA J750 and FLEX test systems.
For additional information about SETIP, contact Rob Marcelis or Paul van Ulsen at +31 38 454 7702.
About Salland Engineering:
Salland Engineering offers Test Application Support, Data Analysis tools and
ATE upgrade products and tools for the semiconductor market. The ATE products
optimize testing by speed & efficiency enhancements and networking of test
floor equipment, in addition to its own SE-PROBE wafer-mapping and control systems
for older probers. Salland Engineering offers a global sales & support organization
and has an installed base of more than 1500 upgrade products, and over 500 Turnkey
Test Applications.
For information on other upgrade products and services,
you can contact us at: info@salland.com.