The need for smaller, more efficient, and more cost-effective electric devices that can perform increasingly complex tasks drives the trend toward highly integrated circuits, which often results in more test ports. In addition, low-power ICs need to operate at extremely low current and voltage levels to meet low-power consumption requirements. However, accurate measurement of such small current and voltage levels can be challenging due to factors such as limited measurement equipment sensitivity. Additionally, the complex control among sleep and active modes in low power ICs require dynamic IV characterization as well as static DC IV characterization. As circuits continue to become more complex and used in more critical applications, test sequences become more complex, requiring more test instruments.
The conventional test setup requires a variety of basic instruments including multiple power supplies to supply the required voltage to various test ports with different voltage requirements, digital multimeters (DMMs) for measuring voltage and current, pulse generators for simulating signals, and digitizers for capturing signals in time domain.
However, to meet these recent needs, the conventional test setup has the following challenges:
• A higher integrated circuit requires more basic instruments, such as power supplies and DMMs, increasing test cost and footprint.
• The basic instrument is not precise and fast enough to characterize low-power circuits that operate among multiple states, such as sleep and active.
• Emerging circuit evaluation needs a more complex test sequence, which requires complex synchronization among enormous equipment.
To address these challenges, you need a low-power IC test solution that will:
• Enable broad IV characterization of highly integrated low-power circuits among multiple states at lower cost and smaller footprint.
• This can be done with an all-in-one SMU solution with an integrated pulser and digitizer, minimizing the number of test equipment and system footprint and addressing the challenge of increased test cost and footprint for testing highly integrated circuits.
• The SMU of choice must be flexible enough to meet your high-speed, high-resolution, and high-density requirements – allowing easy adaptation to various application requirements.
• We will need an SMU with a wide dynamic range to enable the characterization of multiple states and their transitions and the accurate evaluation of the operation of low-power ICs.
• The solution needs to cater to a wider output range, faster transient response, and narrower pulsed bias.
• The solution of choice needs to be a single-box solution with an intelligent trigger system, making it easy to synchronize multiple instruments with each other and characterize circuits under complex sequences.
Learn exactly how to achieve this and many more tips and tricks from this detailed technical video.
