Integrated Circuits Testing: Remote Access to Test Equipment for Labs and Engineering

This paper concerns the local and remote use of an Integrated Circuits (IC) Automated Test Equipment (ATE) for both educational and engineering purposes. This experience was initiated in 1998 in the context of a French network (CNFM) in order to provide a distant control to industrial equipment for academic and industrial people. The actual shared resource is a Verigy V93K System on Chip (SoC) tester platform. The cost of such an equipment is close to 1M€, without taking into account the maintenance and attached human resources expenses to make it work properly daily. Although the sharing of this equipment seems to be obvious for education, the French experience is quite a unique example in the world. Here, practical information regarding IC testing and network setup for remote access are detailed, together with the associated training program.