Presto Engineering’s facility in Caen, France, the largest independent semiconductor test facility in Europe, has now received ISO 9001:2015 certification. Presto provides outsourced operations for semiconductor and IoT device companies, helping its customers minimize overhead, reduce risk and accelerate time-to-market. The company is a recognized expert in the development of industrial solutions for RF, analog, mixed-signal and secured applications – from tape-out to delivery of finished goods.
They thus have an extensive and comprehensive range of semiconductor test equipment. This includes testing at every stage from wafer, through die, to final packed device. As part of the ISO 9001: 2015 quality standard, they have a comprehensive range of equipment for non-destructive analysis such as X-Ray to check packaging and bondings, and ultrasound to see inside a device to check for de-lamination, voids and cracked silicon. There is also equipment to check for failure localization by photoemission or thermal laser stimulation, and deep physical analysis, i.e. strip a device down layer by layer to see exactly where it is failing and why. Other advanced equipment such as an atomic force microscope or a scanning electron microscope are used to reveal the precise details of the structure of a chip down to a few nanometers.
A key part of a quality system in the semiconductors industry is traceability. Detailed record keeping traces every wafer, every operation, every die and every test. Thus, in the event that there is a faulty chip in the field, it can be traced back to try and determine the cause and to see if any other chips have been affected that might necessitate a recall. In the case of an automotive recall, this could be very expensive so it is vital to be able to narrow the problem down to only the affected chips.
According to Martin Kingdon, Presto’s VP of Sales, they have assembled a suite of state-of-the-art equipment as part of their commitment of quality and this new standard. They provide customers with a comprehensive service once they provide them with a design that covers every stage of the chip manufacturing and testing process right through to final product. As part of the quality assurance to customers, rigorous tests are done at every stage. Such a comprehensive test and failure analysis capability all together under one roof is very rare and usually requires a number of different test houses which means that issues could be missed. Having all the skills and equipment together in one place means that Presto can keep searching until they find the cause of a problem so that it can be resolved and quality maintained.
