Introduction to FLEX National Microelectronics and Photonics Testing Collaboratory Advanced Mixed-Signal Lab Written By Dong (Hudson) An

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Release Note Version Description Date 0.0 Initial draft for internal review 12/10/2007 0.1 Format switched from powerpoint to word.

Revised according to comments from Rob and Gail. Waiting for further editing on formatting.

02/19/2008

0.2 Revised with Rob’s comments on wording 02/28/2008

Table of Content Overview ............................................................................................................................. 5 Section I. Configuration of the FLEX tester ....................................................................... 6

1.1. Tester Main Cabinet ................................................................................................. 7 1.2. Tester Mechanical Cabinet ...................................................................................... 7 1.3. Test Head ................................................................................................................. 7 1.4 User Computer .......................................................................................................... 9

Section II. Test Instruments in FLEX ............................................................................... 10 2.1. DC30 ...................................................................................................................... 10 2.2. HSD200 ................................................................................................................. 11 2.3. BBAC ..................................................................................................................... 12 2.4. VHFAC .................................................................................................................. 12 2.5 Microwave .............................................................................................................. 13 2.6 PicoClock ................................................................................................................ 14 2.7 User Power .............................................................................................................. 14 2.8. GPIO ...................................................................................................................... 15

Section III. Summary and Future Readings ...................................................................... 16 Appendix A. Sample Tests of the FLEX Tester ............................................................... 17

Sample Test 1 – ADC ................................................................................................... 17 Sample Test 2 – DAC ................................................................................................... 17 Sample Test 3 – Wireless Receiver .............................................................................. 18 Sample Test 4 – Time-to-Voltage Converter (TVC) .................................................... 19

Appendix B. Document Hierarchy ................................................................................... 20

Overview The Teradyne FLEX tester is a monolithic test equipment which is optimized for mixed-signal microelectronic circuits or microsystems testing. As such, the FLEX tester is comprised of a number of discrete, but integrated test instruments, addressing a range of mixed-signal characterization needs, including DC sources and meters, up to RF characterization in the electrical domain. This tester is the core test equipment used in the Advanced Mixed-Signal Lab (AMSL) of National Microelectronics and Photonics Testing Collaboratory (NMPTC). This document provides a brief introduction to the configuration and test capabilities of the Teradyne FLEX tester. This is the first document a user should read in order to get acquainted with FLEX. After reading this document, the user should be able to decide whether the FLEX tester fits the test needs. If so, the user should proceed to read subsequent document to build up his/her knowledge on the tester in order to effectively perform the test; otherwise, the user is encouraged to seek alternative test resources at CMC, including other test labs within NMPTC and the testing pool of CMC. This document is organized as follows. The first section will show the fundamental configuration of the FLEX tester. The second section will describe the features and functionalities of each test instrument in the FLEX tester. The third section summarizes this document and guides the user for further readings on the FLEX tester. In addition, two appendices are included at the end of this document. The first appendix describes a number of sample test setups which help the user better understand the test capabilities of the tester. The second appendix shows a hierarchy of the full suite of documents describing the FLEX tester, its sub-instruments and sample software code modules, for the user to understand the flow of training for AMSL.

Section I. Configuration of the FLEX tester The Teradyne FLEX tester can be divided into four main components. As shown in Figure 1.1, these components are labeled and they are:

1. Tester main cabinet 2. Tester mechanical cabinet 3. Test head 4. User computer

Figure 1.1 Configuration of the FLEX Tester

1.1. Tester Main Cabinet The tester main cabinet contains a number of DC power supplies which take the external supply power and convert them into other DC voltages. These DC voltages are not connected directly to the device-under-test (DUT) but are used for power supplies and voltage references for various types of instruments in the test head of FLEX. It is worth remembering that all the signals sent to the DUT are generated inside the test head instead of generating them inside the main cabinet and then sending them to the DUT, because the latter option creates significantly long paths for the signals and therefore introduces in a considerable amount of parasitics in the measurement. Following the same manner, all the signals captured from the DUT are measured inside the test head instead of sending them back into the main cabinet. The tester main cabinet also provides a master clock signal source at the frequency of 50 MHz. This clock signal is used as the global reference of all digital instruments inside the test head of the FLEX tester. It is strictly prohibited that a user opens the main cabinet, for the purpose of both user safety and equipment safety.

1.2. Tester Mechanical Cabinet The tester mechanical cabinet contains a mechanical system that is used to ascend or descend the test head. This physical translation of the test head is required in some industrial test environment, such as cases where the test head needs to be brought in close proximity to a production test line. When testing packaged devices or prototype microsystems, which is generally the case in AMSL, the mechanical motion is usually not necessary. If the user would need to adjust the position of the test head, please speak to the lab engineer for further instructions.

1.3. Test Head The test head is the core of the FLEX tester, as it consists of the electronic circuitry which defines the tester performance and mediates the signal I/O to the DUT.

Individual circuit boards are dedicated to each of the FLEX sub-instruments, adopting the DC power and the 50 MHz master clock which were generated in the main cabinet and managing the specific signal waveform I/O required by the individual functionalities of those sub-instruments. These instrument boards are also responsible for performing miscellaneous operations such as data processing and computing. All the instrument boards are contained in the bottom part of the test head. The top view of the test head is shown in Figure 1.2. The signals generated from the test head are brought up to the pogo blocks shown in the figure. Since these signals cannot be directly wired to the DUT, a device interface board (DIB), as shown in Figure 1.3, should be provided as an interface between the tester and the DUT. Following the same argument, all the signals returned from the DUT will also be passed into the test head through the DIB.

Figure 1.2 Top View of the Test Head

Figure 1.3 Test Head with DIB

1.4 User Computer The test operations and data processing are performed in the tester but are controlled by the user computer, as shown in Figure 1.1. The user computer manages the tests using a tester software IG-XL, which is Excel based and uses Virtual Basic for Test (VBT) for programming. This software is also capable of doing more sophisticated data analyses such as FFT. It is a custom software developed by Teradyne for both controlling and debugging the tests performed on the FLEX tester. The user computer runs on the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, which also supports remote test with the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) software installed.

Section II. Test Instruments in FLEX Various types of instruments are contained in the FLEX tester and are responsible of different test functionalities. These instruments together with their quantities are listed in Table 2.1. The basic features and test capabilities of each instrument are described in this section.

Table 2.1 Test Instruments in FLEX Instrument Name Description Quantity DC30 V/I source and capture in DC-domain at 30 V 1 HSD200 High-speed digital source and capture at 200 MHz 2 BBAC Broadband/Baseband AC source and capture 1 VHFAC Very-high-frequency AC source and capture 1 Microwave Microwave source and capture 1 PicoClock High-speed low-jitter clock 1 User Powers Medium-voltage high-current DC power supplies 1 GPIO General purpose interface option 1

2.1. DC30 DC30 is a quadrate instrument to generate and capture 20 DC voltages/currents up to 30 V and 100 mA. Another V/I compliance range is 10 V and 200 mA. These compliance ranges are illustrated in Figure 2.1. In order to achieve higher DC currents, two adjacent channels can be merged for 30 V/200 mA or 10 V/400 mA. Accordingly, the number of active channels under this circumstance is 10.

200 mA

-200 mA

100 mA

-100 mA

10 V 30 V-10 V-30 V V

I

30 V/100 mACompliance

10 V/200 mACompliance

Figure 2.1 V/I Compliance Ranges of DC30 The DC30 instrument can also be used for time measurement in the range between 20 ns to 670 ms. The time measurements that can be done using DC30 include period, frequency, pulse width, duty cycle, rise/fall time, and pin-to-pin delay. The DC30 instrument can also be used to source/capture low-frequency AC waveforms. Each DCVI can source a waveform up to 2560 samples and can be divided into as many as 8 segments. The sample rate can be set to 0 or 977.517 Hz to 1 MHz. Each DCVI meter can capture up to 512 samples of a waveform with a capture rate of 781.25 Hz – 100 kHz.

2.2. HSD200 The HSD200 instrument is the high-speed digital instrument that runs up to 200 MHz. There are 48 channels on each HSD200 instrument. With two HSD200 instruments installed in our FLEX tester, there are a total number of 96 channels available. All HSD200 channels can be used for low-voltage operations between -1 V to +6 V, with a resolution of 1 mV. Among all 96 channels, 4 of them can be used for high-voltage operations between 0 to 20 V with 100 mA output current. The time resolution of each channel is 39.0625 ns. The jitter on each channel is not officially specified by Teradyne but is reported to be around 40 ps.

2.3. BBAC There are two source channels and two capture channels on the BBAC instrument. Each channel can be made to be differential or single-ended as needed by the test. The bandwidth of each channel is 15 MHz, with accuracy up to 16-bit of resolution. The basic specifications of BBAC source channels are listed in Table 2.2, while those of BBAC capture channels are listed in Table 2.3.

Table 2.2 Basic Specifications of BBAC Source Channels Peak Output Voltage Single-Ended Mode 5.12 Vp-p

Differential Mode 10.24 Vp-p Sample Rate Minimum 5 kilo-samples/s

Maximum 1 Giga-samples/s Memory Depth 4 Mega-samples – 1 kilo-samples =

4193304 samples

Table 2.3 Basic Specifications of BBAC Capture Channels Peak Input Voltage Single-Ended Mode 5.12 Vp-p

Differential Mode 10.24 Vp-p Sample Rate Minimum 5 kilo-samples/s

Maximum 50 Mega-samples/s Memory Depth 1 Mega-samples – 512 samples = 1048064

samples

2.4. VHFAC There are two source channels and two capture channels on the VHFAC instrument. Each channel can be made to be differential or single-ended as needed. The bandwidth of each channel is 160 MHz, with accuracy up to 12-bit of resolution. The basic specifications of VHFAC source channels are listed in Table 2.4, while those of VHFAC capture channels are listed in Table 2.5.

Table 2.4 Basic Specifications of VHFAC Source Channels

Peak Output Voltage Single-Ended, DC Mode, Open Load -4 V – 4 V

Differential, AC Mode, 50 Ω Load -3 V – 3 V Sample Rate Minimum 3,434 kilo-samples/s

Maximum 400 Mega-samples/s Memory Depth 8 Mega-samples

Table 2.5 Basic Specifications of VHFAC Capture Channels Peak Input Voltage Single-Ended, DC Mode, Open Load -20.48 V – 20.474 V

Differential, AC Mode, 50 Ω Load 0.016 V – 4.096 V Sample Rate (14-bit resolution)

Minimum 3,434 kilo-samples/s Maximum 80 Mega-samples/s

Sample Rate (12-bit resolution)

Minimum 80 Mega-samples/s Maximum 125 Mega-samples/s

Memory Depth 1048575 samples

2.5 Microwave There are 11 channels on the Microwave instrument. The maximum bandwidth of the Microwave channels is 6 GHz. The Microwave instrument can be used to generate either continuous waveform or modulated waveform together with BBAC or VHFAC instruments. With the additional embedded noise source and low-noise amplifier (LNA), the Microwave instrument is very powerful and capable of performing a number of tests in the RF frequency domain. The basic specifications of Microwave source channels are listed in Table 2.6, while those of VHFAC capture channels are listed in Table 2.7.

Table 2.6 Basic Specifications of Microwave Source Channels

Frequency Range 50 MHz – 6 GHz Frequency Resolution 50 MHz – 4 GHz 2 Hz

4 GHz – 6 GHz 4 Hz Amplitude Range 50 MHz – 3 GHz +13 dBm – -100 dBm

3 GHz – 6 GHz +10 dBm – -100 dBm Amplitude Resolution 0.1 dB Phase Noise at 3 GHz 10 kHz offset -116 dBc/Hz

10 MHz offset -138 dBc/Hz

Table 2.7 Basic Specifications of Microwave Capture Channels Input Frequency Range 50 MHz – 6 GHz Input Amplitude Range Up to +20 dBm IF Bandwidth 100 kHz – 40 MHz IIP3 50 MHz – 600 MHz +24 dB

600 MHz – 6 GHz +30 dB

2.6 PicoClock One of the main advantages of the integrated test environment offered by the FLEX is that a wide range of digital and analog tests can be simultaneously performed, and with reference to a common, high-precision clock signal, which is provided by the PicoClock module. There is one PicoClock signal on each of the two support boards in the FLEX tester. These two PicoClock signals are complementary to each other. Each of them provides a clock signal between the frequency of 5 MHz and 1 GHz, with a jitter less than 1 ps. The differential output voltage on the PicoClock signal is 1.6 Vp-p.

2.7 User Power Some tests may require provision of power which exceeds the capability of the DC30 instrument. To meet this need, the FLEX provides a “User Power” function, which delivers six channels of medium-voltage high-current power signals as listed in Table 2.8. These power supplies are not programmable (as is the case for the more modest current rating DC30 instrument).

Table 2.8 List of User Power in the FLEX Tester V/I Rating General Usage Quantity 5 V/3 A Powering digital circuits 2 15 V/2 A Powering analog circuits 2 12 V/1.25 A Powering relays 1 5 V/3 A Powering relays 1

2.8. GPIO The General Purpose Interface Option (GPIO) instrument in the FLEX tester is used as the interface between the tester and external equipment. It takes signals from the external equipment and route them onto the pogo blocks on the test head. These signals are further passed onto the DUT via the DIB. On the other hand, output signals from the DUT can also be passed onto external equipment via the GPIO instrument. A picture of the GPIO interface which is located on the rear side of the test head is shown in Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2 GPIO Interface

Section III. Summary and Future Readings This document gives a brief introduction to the configuration and test capabilities of the Teradyne FLEX tester. After reading this document, the user should have grasped a high-level overview of the FLEX tester, and should be able to put forward the following two decisions:

1. Does the FLEX tester meet your test needs? 2. Which instruments you will be using to test your DUT?

If the user finds the FLEX tester to be the right test resource for his/her test, they should proceed to read the next document, which is an introduction to IG-XL, the test program for the FLEX tester. After that, the user should read the corresponding modules for all the instruments involved in his/her proposed test. To better understand the hierarchy of the user documents, Appendix B is added at the end of the document to further illustrate the correlation between the documents. Please log onto the NMPTC website at https://www1.cmc.ca/clients/collaboratory/ to obtain all the other user documents. If you have any question or concern, please contact Dong (Hudson) An at an@cmc.ca or (613) 530-4796.

Appendix A. Sample Tests of the FLEX Tester

Sample Test 1 – ADC In a standard ADC test, the DC30 instrument is used to power up the DUT; the BBAC or VHFAC instrument is used as the DUT input according to the DUT specifications; and the HSD200 instrument is used to capture the DUT output. Furthermore, each instrument may, in turn, reference a global clock signal, via the PicoClock module. This sample test setup is shown in Figure A.1.

DUT

DC30

BBAC

VHFAC

HSD200

Figure A.1 Test Setup for Sample Test 1 – ADC

Sample Test 2 – DAC A DAC test might differ from the ADC example shown above in terms of the direction of signal flows. This will require a change in the I/O configuration. In a standard DAC test, the DC30 instrument is used to power up the DUT; the HSD200 instrument is used as the DUT input; and the BBAC or VHFAC instrument is used to capture the DUT output according to the DUT specifications. This sample test setup is shown in Figure A.2.

DUT

DC30

BBAC

VHFAC

HSD200

Figure A.2 Test Setup for Sample Test 2 – DAC

Sample Test 3 – Wireless Receiver In this test, DC30 is used to power up the DUT; the Microwave instrument is used as the input to the DUT and generates modulated signals together with BBAC or VHFAC according to the DUT specifications; and HSD200 is used to capture the DUT output. This sample test setup is shown in Figure A.3.

DUT

DC30

Microwave

BBAC

VHFAC

HSD200

Figure A.3 Test Setup for Sample Test 3 – Wireless Receiver

Sample Test 4 – Time-to-Voltage Converter (TVC) In a standard TVC test, DC30 is used to power up the DUT and is also used to capture the DUT output. The HSD200 and/or PicoClock instrument are used as the input according to the DUT specifications. This sample test setup is shown in Figure A.4.

DUT

DC30

DC30HSD200

PicoClock

Figure A.4 Test Setup for Sample Test 4 – TVC

Appendix B. Document Hierarchy This appendix explains the hierarchy of the training documents developed for the Advanced Mixed-Signal Lab of NMPTC. The purpose of this appendix is to help users better understand the content and the scope of the training documents. The first document a user should read is Introduction to FLEX. This is the document which gives a high-level description of the FLEX tester, with focus on its test capabilities. After reading this document, the user should be able to decide if the Advanced Mixed-Signal Lab is capable of performing the required tests a user intend to do. If not, the user should consult other CMC resources such as other labs in NMPTC and the testing pool for appropriate test solutions. If the FLEX tester suits all the test needs, the user should proceed to the next document Introduction to IG-XL. This document is an introduction to the IG-XL program, an Excel and Visual Basic based programming interface employed in the FLEX testing platform. After reading this document, the user will get acquainted with the IG-XL interface and the various worksheets exploited in it. In addition, this document also serves as a step-by-step guide to the IG-XL program and should be retained for future references while programming the test instruments in FLEX. At this stage, the user is equipped with sufficient knowledge to proceed to program individual test instrument in the tester. First of all, the user should decide on which instrument to use to perform his test. The test capability of each instrument can be obtained from the Introduction to FLEX document. After that, the user should read document(s) corresponding to the appropriate instrument to construct the test program. These documents cover the following test instrument in the FLEX tester:

- DCVI 30V (DC30) - High-speed digital (HSD) - Broad-band AC (BBAC) - Very-high-frequency AC (VHFAC) - Microwave - PicoClock

Inside each of these instrument-specific documents, the test capability of each instrument is further elaborated, in addition to the required programming syntax and steps. A flow diagram is displayed on the next page to illustrate the aforementioned document hierarchy.

Introduction to FLEXRead module

Get to know the test capability of the

FLEX tester

Does the test capability of FLEX meet your needs?

Look into other test resources offered by NMPTC and CMC

Read moduleIntroduction to IG-XL

Get to know the software interface of FLEX

This module also serves as a guide to the general programming

flow for FLEX and should be retained for future reference

Which instrument(s) in FLEX do you need

to test your DUT?

Read instrument-specific modules to write program for your test

Broadband AC

Very-high frequency AC

High-speed digital

RF Picoclock

DC30 V/I

Yes

No

Figure B.1 Document Hierarchy