DFT Digest

Happy New Year DFT’ers around the world! Welcome to the DFT Digest, an outpost on the web intent upon disseminating and discussing anything with regard to Design-for-Test of IC devices.

Maybe an introduction is in order. My name is John Ford, and I’ve been working in this industry for a little over 22 years (gasp!) in various engineering capacities: test (digital and mixed-signal), DFT, verification, and some design automation. I like doing a variety of things. The bulk of my career has been in Southern California, for companies such as Western Digital, Silicon Systems, and Texas Instruments. Just recently I worked for Freescale In Austin, TX, but my homeland (California) called me back, and so currently I’m working for a startup based in Irvine, and I do get to do a variety of things. As such, my IC engineering experience is broad, but not necessarily deep in any one area.

Enough about my experience (or lack thereof). Just remember the opinions expressed within the pages of this blog belong to me, and not my employers.

What can you expect to see discussed here? A variety of musings inspired by my own DFT-related trials and tribulations, invitations to discuss new DFT techniques (or different applications of old techniques), a sprinkling of DFT-related news items that pop up as time goes on, and anything else I feel would be interesting to the DFT engineering community as a whole.

Let’s talk about shrinking geometries: what is being experienced at 90nm and anticipated for 65nm? What techniques are more important? Less important? What about pushing DFT solutions toward the front-end of the design process (RTL)? How does low power design affect DFT? How much of your verification suite is being ported to the ATE, and to what end?

The intended audience is not just DFT engineers, to whom I’d be ‘preaching to the choir’, but to all those involved in the design of ICs That might be interested in the value and techniques of Design-for-Test. Therefore, the content of this website aims to be educational as well as exploratory.

Finally, what is my motivation? Well, initially just to start an on-going, easily accessible discussion. Get people involved. Provide a vendor-agnostic environment that concentrates on methods and industry best practices. For sure, there should be discussions of this tool vs. that with regard to specific issues, but this is not a “hit-blog” personally, I’m not interested in becoming a gadfly or a shill, for that matter, for anybody. The articles will be written by me and I don’t work for a tool vendor.

Anyway, let’s get it started, and have some fun with it!