Advanced Packaging, July 2008

"With the cost of some advanced packages reaching several times the cost of the die they contain, the value contributed by functional testing, which allows manufacturers to avoid the cost of packaging defective die, has grown dramatically. Of course, testing has its own costs in both money and time. In addition to capital expenditures, ongoing maintenance, and consumables expenses for test equipment, testing adds as much as several hours per die to the manufacturing process, and several months to product development cycle. The increasing influence of functional testing on profitability has led to careful scrutiny of test processes in a continuing effort to optimize cost-benefit ratios. Probe card test and analysis, which provide the physical interface between the tester and the integrated circuit, has provided significant returns in areas ranging from the development of new probe technologies, to the management of probe card inventories and repair/refurbishing procedures."

-Darren James, Rudolph Technologies, Inc.

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