Design for Test Pros: Who do you work for?
Design for Test is a funny job - it’s like straddling the wall that, in previous generations, designers would throw their designs over to the test guys to write tests…
Traditionally, designers belong to a design group, of course, and test engineers belong to the operations arm of an organization. Both of these roles have a clear objecive, which is backed by the management of the organization they work for. As a DFT guy, I’ve worked for both design and ops at different times.
Who do you work for?
As time goes on, it seems DFT has become more ‘design of test’ than ‘test of design’, if you will. Even as scan test was becoming more popular - you know, last century - it was still part of the implementation rather than of the design; still at the backend of the design, but before test. But today’s technologies are now being planned well ahead of time, from neccessity. So, most of the time the DFT engineer is on the design staff (if not one of the designers).
One thing that can be tough as a design-for-test engineer in a design group is having to stand your ground in the interest of providing efficient test structures on-chip (or on-board), when met with the opposing forces of reducing area, power - and the schedule. It’s sometimes easy for chip leads and design managers to wave off the test design, because they haven’t lived through the extreme hours spent on the ATE debugging tests for untestable devices.
What’s been your experience?
Leave a Reply