Advantest is about to establish the Semiconductor Test Consortium, an industry-wide collaboration aimed at finding cost-effective solutions to verify complex devices such as systems-on-chip (SoC). This non-profit body will support the development of the Semiconductor Test Open Architecture, a framework created to enable solutions that offer true hardware and software interoperability, with unparalleled benefits. Advantest is presently recruiting participants for the consortium from the ranks of the world’s leading IC manufacturers, to enable the development of a highly scalable and flexible test platform with a lifetime of more than 10 years. Advantest currently has active participation from half of the leading semiconductor companies. Undoubtedly, there is a strong demand for a common architecture that is completely open, documented and supported from all relevant semiconductor-ATE vendors. It has to be open to all companies throughout the supply chain with interest in this sector. The consortium will focus on these goals: driving the direction of an open architecture, publishing the results, providing training programs and workshops, developing solutions and defining and managing validation procedures to ensure full interoperability, and joint marketing and promotion activities to educate the industry about the platform architecture and ensure its implementation. According to Toshio Maruyama, president and COO of Advantest, ”The establishment of the consortium comes at a highly opportune time. As the industry begins to recover from a very rough period, companies are starting to step up the ramp of advanced manufacturing operations – making it imperative to address the process flexibility and cost challenges that chipmakers face in providing highly reliable devices in the most cost and time-efficient manner”.
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