Lab to Fab Standardization Success

Did you know that in 2003, there were only an estimated 500 million smart, connected computing devices in the world. With the explosion of IoT, this number is estimated to have reached 50 billion in 2020 and stands to be at least a couple of trillion in 2030. Today, even a five-year old is an everyday user of complex computing devices. And there seems to be no sign of this trend reversing any time in the future. The demand for faster and smarter devices is growing at an unprecedented rate.?

But what has not grown as rapidly as the demand for these devices is the supporting framework to validate chip design. Post silicon validation forms the most critical step in ensuring the device performs the functions it is meant to. But it remains to be a fractured process that consumes most of the time and resources (up to 70%) in the product lifecycle. Engineering teams are faced with the impossible pressure of addressing high test coverage in a very short span of time.??

Currently teams within organizations build software interfaces from scratch or use a variety of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) test sequencers. This disparity and non-uniformity limits data collection and correlation and creates wasted effort in developing similar functionality across different groups. With more IP being integrated into a single chip, previously distinct validation teams must now work with each other to get the product out into the market faster.?

An enterprise-wide vision to bring together engineering teams on to a centralized platform that can encourage sharing, collaboration, and building upon existing knowledge is the ideal way forward. It can help engineers reuse software assets and code across teams and projects, enable automation in testing and allow easy onboarding of new engineers into validation activity.?

But it must also include the iterative process of collaborating with the engineers who ultimately have to use them. All efforts to create a standardized framework become futile if the end-user engineer is not co-opted in the process and without a metric to track user adoption as well.?

Creating extensive self-paced learning material and having periodical demos to relevant users is a great start to address user adoption. A dedicated support team for handholding will be required to help users through the initial phase of adoption. This involves taking users step-by-step through the framework and bridging gaps quickly. The support team must respond quickly to develop relevant plugins for specific use cases which can be added to the repository ensuring the framework is responsive and dynamic to greater user adoption.?

This investment in user adoption bolsters standardization efforts and impacts RoI – a good enough reason to take very seriously!?

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