If you are looking for a competitive advantage without making wholesale changes on your test floor, take a close look at our new product offering ... the PE3000.

Taking Advantage of Fast Changing Technology

In response to changing demands of the industry, organizations will commit substantial resources to acquire new systems only to discover

The PE3000 is an exciting, new, Pentium based Central Processing Unit designed to control and operate your LTX77/90 series of testers at a remarkable level of efficiency.

We at ATE Support have been truly committed from the outset of the PE3000 development cycle to produce a superior solution.

A Superior Solution Means:

• Taking full advantage of current and future technology to bring something fresh to the market place, rather than merely emulating the old
  

• Significantly increasing operating speeds
  

• Reducing the cost of ownership by respecting the value of floor space, calibration cost and electricity
  

• Building an ergonomically designed unit able to stand up to the standards of work environment planners
  

• Enhancing the test process in significant areas:
  
      - More data collection capability
      - Equipment Performance SPC
      - Test optimization tools
      - Bar-code loading
      - Throughput enhancement tools
      - Enhanced networking

6 to 12 months later - that the equipment is outdated and cannot be easily upgraded. If you have this especially frustrating and costly experience, you will appreciate the PE3000's open architecture that enables a user to upgrade with the fast pace of changing technology.

Easily Upgraded

As the years go by and the new generations of 80-based processors and motherboards are developed, you will have the opportunity to upgrade and take full advantage of the increased computation speeds without adversely affecting timing of applications.

This will be possible because ATE Support's Enhanced Basic Environment (EBE) software intelligently controls the I/O instruction speed presented to the tester.

Test Program Timing Control

While increased processor speeds affect internal CPU functions such as math, loops, etc., they do not affect the actual I/O processes. One of the many unique features of the PE3000 allows I/O processes to be controlled separately in the form of special Basic commands, giving the Test Engineer enhanced control of the test program timing.

To increase throughput without expanding physical resources such as hardware, testers, floor space and personnel would, of course, be ideal.
The PE3000 achieves that ideal by "creating" test capacity with an unrivaled two-fold approach:

1) Increase Speed

Make the test system run much faster!
By using the latest Pentium technology, compiled code and special re-timing tools, our customers are experiencing throughput improvements on device applications from 25%, with many exceeding 100% or more.

Provide for superior test floor management by creating the ability to view true equipment performance SPC automatically. The PE3000 offers the Equipment Information System (EIS), which, although less traditional, is possibly equally significant. With the critical data the EIS can provide, production management will be able to view true equipment utilization and equipment performance SPC automatically through the PE3000 without adding hardware or even operator input!
This data can be displayed in Real Time or with an automatic hardcopy reporting function. In addition, bar-code input can be added for program loading and replacement of operator paper logs.

As verified by actual customer experience, the EIS has proven to have a powerful, positive impact on product throughput. Incorporating the EIS' unparalleled capabilities into the PE3000's already impressive combination of tools elevates the PE3000 to a more advanced level in the evolution of semiconductor test equipment.

Less Time Maintaining & Calibrating Means More Throughput

One part of the equation in maximizing throughput is creating more time available to test. With our "near-zero load time" capability on compiled programs, load once / run once situations - such as running system calibrations and checkers - improve dramatically. In fact, when running a compatible suite of system cals and checkers, the PE3000 is more than 100% faster than the CP100 and 300% faster than the CP80.

D1 - D10 represent an assortment of devices tested on a PE3000. Percent of increase illustrates actual throughput improvement on a PE3000 relative to the same devices tested on a CP80.

Needless to say, factory floor space is becoming progressively more expensive, and helping our customers to reclaim as much as possible was an important goal when we designed the PE3000. As a result, the PE3000 can be configured as a four CPU-bay cabinet with a single calibrator and a minimum of one keyboard/monitor. The footprint for this configuration is 6.6 sq. feet serving four test stations as opposed to 19.4 sq. feet for the CP100 and 44.6 sq. feet for Dual-CP80s.

Network Capability
to Match Today's
Technology

If you are running a state-of-the-art computer system, doesn't it make sense to connect it to a network with comparable capabilities? To address that issue, we designed the PE3000 network driver to be compatible with third-party networks offering superior SUN/UNIX-based connectivity. Additional capabilities can greatly enhance your test floor control. "Remote logon control" for example, will give your test or sustaining engineers the ability to control the tester across the building (or around the world) as if they were at the system's main console!
Another example is "Bar-coded program loading," a feature that can help eliminate both costly load errors and the time associated with revision checking.

PE3000's superior net- working capabilities enable engineers to log on and control test stations across the country or around the world.

Cost of Ownership

As technology improves, the natural assumption is that cost of ownership will decrease. This is not always true in the semiconductor equipment world. We made strides in this area by not only reducing power and air conditioning requirements, but also by designing the PE3000 to reduce the CPU/calibrator requirement to 4:1. This, of course, means fewer calibrations per year and stands in stark contrast to CP100, which increases the calibrator requirement to a 1:1 ratio.

Enhanced
Data Collection

Many understand the importance of SPC as it pertains to controlling the wafer manufacturing process. Under present conditions, data collection occurs at the expense of test throughput. By virtue of its faster processing speeds, the PE3000 reduces data collection (dlog) overhead to the point of being negligible to production throughput. Finally, engineering may choose to leave dlog on all the time without impacting anticipated product flows on the test floor!

Performance Tracking

The optional performance tracking feature of the PE3000 is truly unique and simply cannot be found in any competitive market today. It will collect real-time SPC data as it pertains to controlling the test process. Some examples of the information one can extract from a test floor are -

Hardware information

(Loadboards, probe cards, contractors, cables, etc.)

• Yield history / Hardware
• MTBF history / Hardware
• Prober/handler index times
• Current hardware location
• Hardware location history
• Problem / Solution history / Hardware

• Discernible activity "auto tracked" at the test head

• Over 700 user-definable states

• Real-time graphical viewing at central location

• Bar-code input

• Real-time graphical viewing
  at central location
• Real-time alarms
  

The % yield vs Touchdown shows how the yield can fall off before the card is put down to maintenance.  The ATDBF is 46,842 and the yield starts to drop off at 35,000.