Rick Green 200

BiTS 2016 to address burn-in and test for sensor-connected radio-enabled devices

Feb. 23, 2016

This year’s Burn-in & Test Strategies Workshop—BiTS 2016—will convene March 6-9 in Mesa, AZ. Organizers say BiTS 2016 will examine the test challenges of the Internet of Things (IoT), including the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), with an emphasis on big data.

The program will include a tutorial, a distinguished speaker, a keynote address, a poster session, and eight technical sessions. In addition to the IoT, sessions will address topics including materials, simulation, high-frequency test, test-cell implementations, and contact technologies.

On Sunday, Jeffrey Roehr, senior member of the technical staff at Texas Instruments, will lead a tutorial designed to give attendees practical information on the theory and statistics that support the application of adaptive test (AT) and outlier analysis (OA) in the production of semiconductor devices. The tutorial will present real-world applications of these techniques, emphasizing burn-in elimination or reduction in production testing. The tutorial will present personal experiences and will reference papers and reports published by universities and companies such as IBM, Intel, Analog Devices, AMD, NXP, and Texas Instruments.

Sunday will conclude with an address by distinguished speaker Risto Puhakka, president of VLSIresearch. He will note that the semiconductor markets have been going through a downturn in recent quarters and will question whether the industry is ready to exploit new technologies to drive the recovery, which is around the corner if not already underway. He’ll focus specifically on what is required from test.

Monday will begin with a keynote address by Dale Ohmart, distinguished member of the technical staff at Texas Instruments. He will discuss the need to redefine test in light of ever increasing test complexity and cost. Discussion will focus on how much test is affordable, what are optimal values for test time and multisite count, and what are the impacts of test on device yield. He will also address non-electrical test and 3D assembly.

The Internet of Things promises to be a hot topic at BiTS 2016. Following the keynote, Session 1 will focus on markets, with Ira Feldman of Feldman Engineering discussing the IoT and smart applications for anything and everything. Also, Mike Frazier and Laurie Wright of Xcerra will address “How the Internet of Things Will Change Back-end Processing,” Robert Howell of Exatron will comment on “Serialized Programming Solutions for IoT Secure Elements,” and Anthony Lum and Dave Armstrong of Advantest will cover “Internet of Things Testing Challenges.”

Session 2 on Monday will emphasize advanced materials, with presentations on long-life probes, carbon-nanotube polymer composites as thermal interface materials, and test PCBs, fixtures, and sockets.

And finally on Monday, Session 3 will include presentations on optimizing the PCB to socket interface and characterizing high-speed interconnect performance. Mike Gedeon of Materion will conclude the session with a presentation titled “Modelling, Materials, and Madness.”

Session 4 on Tuesday will cover high-frequency test. Hiroyuki Yamakoshi of S.E.R. will discuss test, inspection, and evaluation for a blind signal waveform on a printed circuit board. Don Thompson of R&D Altanova will offer an update on his award-winning presentation BiTS 2015, “Designing Sockets for Ludicrous Speed (80 GHz).” Noureen Sajid of Johnstech will discuss device packaging—including device grounding and relative locations to RF signals. And Jason Mroczkowski of Xcerra will provide an update from the BiTS 2015 workshop on automotive radar testing at 81 GHz.

Session 5—titled “West Meets East & Cutting Edge”—will bring some of the best of BiTS Shanghai 2015 to BiTS 2016. Yuanjun Shi of Twinsolution Technology and Xiao Yao of HiSilicon Technologies Co. will present “LPDDR4 Signal & Power Performance Optimization by Hardware.” Also in that session, Sujata Paul of Cisco will address silicon photonics. Nelson Sorbo from Cool Clean Technologies will presents an advanced high-energy CO2 spray cleaning technology. And James Tong will present Texas Instruments’ final test contactor qualification process and low profile contactor solution.

Two sessions will address test cells. In one (Session 6 on Tuesday), Paul Ruo of Aries Electronics will discuss magnetic sensor test, and Gert Haensel of Texas Instruments will talk about magnetically shielded test cells for an integrated fluxgate sensor. Brad Emberger from Advantest will present that company’s vision-assist method for common change kits. And Gianluca Lombardi will present Advantest’s test-cell thermal solution.

And in the second test-cell session (Session 8 on Wednesday), Jose Moreira of Advantest will discuss a silicon photonics wafer probing test cell, citing work in conjunction with Tokyo Electron and STMicroelectronics. Jason Cullen from Plastronics will explore the challenges of modeling the thermal environment within a burn-in chamber. And Edwin Valderama from Intel will address the first wafer level chip scale packaging (WLCSP) testing at tri-temp for RF and non-RF products.

Yet another session—titled “Very Touching” (Session 7 on Wednesday)—will focus on contact technology. Tony Tiengtum of Xcerra will discuss contacting from DC to 40 GHz and beyond. Justin Yun from TSE will discuss silicon rubber sockets and MEMS technology. James Rathburn of HSIO Technologies will speak about small-form-factor sockets and circuits for silicon and platform validation. And Yuanjun Shi from Twin Solution will discuss contact-mark prediction of for QFN packages.

In addition, a Monday poster session will cover WiGig test, re-balling a BGA with gold-plated copper spheres, a thermal test methodology for automotive semiconductor packages, and an in situ 256-node resistive leakage tester.

And finally, I’ll be participating in an Executive Forum that will address the challenges of continuing to scale with Moore’s Law combined with the implications of More Than Moore—both of which will impact the world of packaging, test, and burn-in. Closing the loop on the Internet of Things, the forum will address WL-CSP and other direct-chip-attach technologies and their implications for sensor-connected, radio-enabled IoT devices.

Visit https://bitsworkshop.org/ to register and view the entire advance program.

About the Author

Rick Nelson | Contributing Editor

Rick is currently Contributing Technical Editor. He was Executive Editor for EE in 2011-2018. Previously he served on several publications, including EDN and Vision Systems Design, and has received awards for signed editorials from the American Society of Business Publication Editors. He began as a design engineer at General Electric and Litton Industries and earned a BSEE degree from Penn State.

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