DFT Digest

As I was in the middle of being flogged into a tapeout frenzy, I didn’t get the chance to visit ITC in November. But I guess there always must be some excuse, because I haven’t been to ITC since ‘97 or ‘98, when I was a full-on test engineer. Just the same, I try to keep track of what subjects are being discussed each year.

Anyhoo… As the frenzy died down, I started searching for all the coverage that I must have missed, being so busy and all. And I searched in vain. There really was none! I began to wonder why. I searched EE Times; they cover everything EE right? Nada. A Google search turned up two tiny articles in Test & Measurement World [1] [2] (both of which read like press releases to me), a smattering of pre-conference corporate announcements, and a couple of bibliographical references to papers that were given. After some more concentrated digging, I actually found a blog-post detailing one person’s visit to ITC.

Well good, I guess it did happen after all. I was starting to ponder the question: “What if they held ITC, and nobody came?” - those of you that are old enough might recognize a similar slogan during the Vietnam era…. hey wait! If I have to explain it - never mind.

Seriously, though - why the non-coverage? Nobody cares about test? Not exciting enough? Well, I know the former is not true; everybody cares about test So, it must have been the latter. But I needed to see for myself, so I begged a table of contents pdf from a colleague that did go. After a couple of looks at it, there are a few papers I’d like to give a read; they run the gamut from mixed-signal to microprocessor test, as well as several on delay testing which looked intersting, in title, of couurse. ITC 2005 Program chair Ken Butler cited a “resurgence in attendance and participation”. So again - why the non-coverage?