Study on the costs of on-site VLSI testing

The most important points concerning the manufacturing testing of VLSI are (1) The guaranteed high quality of the testing itself, (2) Low cost testing procedures and (3) Fast development and operation. However, together with the high integration of VLSI, recent large-scale, multi-functional and complex technology has made the above testing procedures more and more difficult to secure. Our section is in charge of the establishment of the manufacturing testing procedures for all MOS-VLSI, excluding stand-alone MOS memory, and of the management of the technological data of all tests. In this paper, we will analyze this data and disclose the results of our study concerning testing costs. In particular, we will discuss the actual necessity of introducing test circuits in regard to the testing costs, and how to obtain the appropriate value for such circuits.