Optimal design of life testing for ULSI circuit manufacturing

The life testing of ultra large scale integration (ULSI) circuits is perhaps the most complex manufacturing process found today. This complexity is, in part, the result of product diversity, uncertainty, and changing technologies, and has caused the cost of testing for ULSI circuits to grow exponentially. The author develops a testing cost model and determines the optimum sample size on test which minimizes the expected total system cost assuming that the cost of waiting per unit time and the cost of placing an ULSI circuit on test are given. Numerical examples are also provided to illustrate the methods