BANGALORE: Texas Instruments set foot in India a decade ago and set up Texas Instruments India, becoming one of the pioneers in chip design and semiconductor industry in the country. After launching a number of dedicated centers and products from the facility, it has announced the launch of their silicon test and research and development center. The center is set up with an investment of one million dollars and will be engaged in Integrated Circuit (IC) test and development. This is the first company in the country to deploy such a process.

The product development activity involved in getting an IC released into market involves a critical function such as, validating the device for its system function. This also includes validation for production worthiness.

There are a number of factors that make silicon test development and the test process critical. The ICs that ship out to a customer should meet all the requirements that the customer's system demands. When a customer demands millions of units to be sent to him, there should be a way to validate the requirements in a short time and meet the demand. This is important as market windows are shrinking on a day-to-day basis and customers require newer and more complex functions to be integrated into an IC in a short span.

The semiconductor industry is driving integration and high performance. Integration translates to having Radio Frequency Analog and DSP functions in a single IC. High performance is driving the ICs to increasingly higher speeds (3-5GHz) and resolutions (resolutions of a 1-2u volts). Increased complexity of devices is pushing the limits of processing technology and results in exponential rise in the number of tests to be done.
It is also necessary to take a look at the cost implications of test or validation. As mentioned before every IC that goes out of the door is tested. Test costs are in the order of 30 per cent –50 per cent of the overall IC cost. For supporting large customer demands, faster tests are required and this means using sophisticated Automated Testers and developing test solutions, which take only a few seconds for each device.

Take the example of an IC used in a cell phone receiver, IT receives the RF signals and converts it into voice signals that we hear. Some of the parameters of interest will be the power taken by the IC and noise level of received signal to enable clear reception. Taking into consideration the different operating conditions this results in hundreds of tests to be carried out. Due to cost requirements these need to be done in one to two seconds.

The Bangalore team of TI is involved in the development of ICs for various end equipment and applications. The team started with chip design 13 years back and at the beginning all the test development and test/validation was happening at its head quarters in Dallas. As the number of products being released from the Indian team went on a rise and as complexity increased exponentially, need to have the test facility in India became critical. A team was setup four years ago to gain expertise in mixed signal test and validation. Also a lab was started with sophisticated test & measurement equipment.