Volume diagnostics are essential for efficiently determining the causes of silicon failures that cut into IC profit margins and impact time-to-quality. Developing a design and ensuring its manufacturability is not enough to insure the product’s profitability. An acceptable yield level must be achieved quickly, or the profit margin will be seriously compromised.

Synopsys has developed an enhanced volume diagnostics solution that is comprised of two products: TetraMAX ATPG identifies potential defects from scan test failures, using physical design data to significantly improve diagnostics accuracy; Yield Explorer analyzes these potential defects across multiple failing devices to uncover systematic yield issues, also using physical design data to identify specific yield-limiting layout geometries. In the latest release, TetraMAX ATPG directly connects to Yield Explorer for fast deployment of the solution and to improve data throughput for production runs that require massive quantities of design, test and fab data. In addition, new support of industry-standard formats maximizes engineering productivity: LEF/DEF facilitates easy, one-time import of physical design data, and STDF V4-2007 enables transfer of defective silicon data from industry-leading testers.

TetraMAX ATPG and Yield Explorer are part of Synopsys' comprehensive synthesis-based test solution, also comprised of DFTMAX™ compression for power-aware scan test, DesignWare® STAR Memory System® solution for test and repair of embedded memories, and DesignWare SERDES IP with built-in self-test. Synthesis-based test enables designers to achieve optimal quality-of-results and eliminate time-consuming iterations between design and test.