Case Study: LG Electronics achieves higher-quality, cost-effective HDTV testing with Synopsys DFT MAX compression and TetraMAX ATPG

DFT MAX compression and TetraMAX ATPG enable higher-quality testing at LG Electronics

LG Electronics’ System IC Business Team, which develops HDTV and mobile TV chipsets, faced tight product-quality targets for deep-submicron (DSM) defect screening while controlling testing cost and meeting tapeout schedules. The latest HDTV design—about 2.3 million instances with 400,000 scan flops on a 65 nm process—required many more DSM tests, but large pattern counts and test-data volume exceeded low-cost ATE memory and threatened to slow production and increase costs.

LG implemented Synopsys’ DFT MAX on-chip compression together with TetraMAX ATPG and PrimeTime timing analysis to generate and apply accurate DSM patterns. Compression cut test data and application time dramatically (diagrammed benefits: ~10–100× reduction), enabling all patterns to be applied at once, achieving higher defect coverage, first-silicon success, lower screening cost, no impact on tapeout schedules, and rapid deployment across multiple multi-million-gate designs.

LG

Woo-Hyun Paik

Research Fellow