Multi-Site and Multi-Probe Substrate Testing on an ATE

This paper presents a novel method that utilizes multi-site and multi-probe facilities in an ATE for substrate testing. The test time for a batch can be considerably reduced by efficiently utilizing an ATE with a number of flying-probes and multiple substrates under test (SUTs). An analytical model that predicts very accurately the batch test time is proposed. This model establishes the optimal multi-site configuration as corresponding to the batch size that allow multiple SUTs to be simultaneously tested on a ATE. Simulation results for an ATE with 12 flying-probe as example of a commercially available tester are provided; for this ATE the proposed method achieves a reduction of 54.66% in test time over a single-site method (at complete coverage of the modeled faults)