The paper describes an original educational experience that has been set by French universities to respond to IC manufacturer needs for electronics engineers having a double design and test competence. In each microelectronics academic center, students may be trained in the field of IC testing using real industrial up-to-date test resources. This is made possible by the concept of distributed remote access the authors have developed. In place of having some substandard test tools located in several university centers, it has been chosen to create a unique test center (the so-called CRTC) equipped with a high performing up-to-date ATE representative of real industrial test tools. The first working year of CRTC reveals a real demand in the field. About 30 trainings have been organized by CRTC during 1998. They have allowed about 150 people to be trained in characterization/production IC testing.

A successful distance-learning experience for IC test education

The European network for integrated circuit testing education described in this paper addresses the shortage of skill in mixed-signal production testing by encouraging students at pre- and post-doctoral levels to attend innovative training courses in the field, jointly supported by industry. The objective of the present educational experience is to strengthen given leading educational centers in Europe, in the critical field of mixed-signal testing, with the active support and guidance of industry. The project is an expansion of the successful French experience on engineering test education which allows any distant student to have a remote access to one-and one only-test resource center equipped with up-to-date/high-tech testers.

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A remote access to engineering test facilities for the distant education of European microelectronics students

Traditionally, automated test equipment (ATE) manufacturers have been producing test systems to meet the needs of the electronic industry and research organizations. There is however another fairly large ATE market that has not been addressed by ATE-educational institutes and universities. Issues related to the electronic test equipment for educational institutions are discussed in this paper. It identifies the requirements to implement a test engineering program in the university environment, the challenges that face both university and industry, and strategies that can be adopted to meet these requirements. It provides a general roadmap that allows customization to suit emerging test engineering developments that may occur future. Consideration is given to a pragmatic, and cost effective collaboration between the academic and industrial worlds.

Making ATE accessible for academic institutions

The European network for test education described in this paper addresses the shortage of skills in mixed-signal production testing by encouraging students at pre- and post-doctoral levels to attend innovative training courses in the field. The objective of the present educational experience is to strengthen in the critical field of mixed-signal testing leading educational centres in Europe, with the active support and guidance of industry. The project is an expansion of the successful French experience of CRTC which allows any distant student to have a remote access to a unique test resource centre equipped with up-to-date/high-tech test facilities.

European network for test education

The paper deals with a European experience of education in industrial test of ICs and SoCs using remote testing facilities. The project addresses the problem of the shortage in microelectronics engineers aware with the new challenge of testing mixed-signal SoCs far multimedia/telecom market. It aims at providing test training facilities at a European scale in both initial and continuing education contexts. This is done by allowing the academic and industrial partners of the consortium to train engineers using the common test resources center (CRTC) hosted by LIRMM (Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Robotique et de Microelectronique de Montpellier, France). CRTC test tools include up-to-date/high-tech testers that are fully representative of real industrial testers as used on production testfloors. At the end of the project, it is aimed at reaching a cruising speed of about 16 trainees per year per center. Each trainee will have attend at least one one-week training using the remote test facilities of CRTC.

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Test engineering education in Europe: the EuNICE-Test project

Electronics manufacturers are driven to produce new integrated circuits (IC’s) with higher quality in shorter production cycles (the well known time-to-market concept). In parallel, with the advent of submicron technologies digital circuits become more complex, with an increasing transistor-per-pin ratio making them hard-to-test without Design-For-Test (DFT) and Built-in Self-Test (BIST) facilities [1]. Also, during the past decade the production of mixed analog-digital IC’s have been dramatically developed due to the explosive growth of the multimedia and telecom markets and testing for quality assurance has proven to approach 50% of the manufacturing costs for some complex mixed-signal IC’s [2].

G. Cambon

Papers

Remote Education Experience on Learning IC Characterization/Production Test