What's Changing In Outlier Detection

Commonly used outlier detection methods, such as parts average testing or determining whether a die is good based upon other dies in the immediate neighborhood, are falling short in advanced packages and SoCs. Some devices may pass tests and still fail in the field. In the past, this was solved by adding margin into designs, but that margin now takes too big a bite out of performance and power efficiency. Noam Brousard, vice president of solutions engineering at proteanTecs, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about the need to approach yield earlier in the design cycle, why pass/fail approaches are no longer guarantees of reliability, and what can be done to improve quality over time.