Semiconductor test system gains from improved PXI SMU channel density
The PXIe-4163 high-density source measure unit (SMU) provides six times more DC channel density than previous NI PXI SMUs for testing RF, MEMS, and mixed-signal and other analogue semiconductor components.
“Highly disruptive technologies like 5G, the Internet of Things and autonomous vehicles place continued pressure on semiconductor organisations to evolve and adopt more efficient approaches to semiconductor test – from the lab environment to the production floor,” said Eric Starkloff, NI executive vice- president of global sales and marketing.
“Semiconductor test is a strategic focus for NI. We are extending the capabilities of our software platform and PXI, exemplified by our newest PXI SMU, to help chipmakers address their top challenges.”
Chipmakers can benefit from the Semiconductor Test System’s (STS’s) throughput, performance at cost and footprint on the production floor. The new PXIe-4163 SMU further complements these capabilities. It delivers increased DC channel density for higher parallelism in multisite applications and lab-grade measurement quality in a production-ready form factor.
Engineers can take advantage of this combination to use the same instrumentation in the validation lab and the production floor, which reduces challenges with measurement correlation and shortens time to market.
Engineers can use the new PXIe-4163 SMU in either STS configurations or stand-alone PXI systems.
Key features include up to 24 channels in a single PXI Express slot, +/- 24V per channel and up to 100-microA source/sink per channel. The SMU also offers 100pA current sensitivity, up to 100 kS per second sampling rate and update rate, SourceAdapt for minimising overshoot and oscillations and interactive configuration and debug software.
There are up to 408 high-precision SMU channels in a single PXI chassis (4U of rack space) and the SMU is fully supported in the STS including system-level cabling, calibration and pin-mapping support.
The STS is based on the NI PXI platform that enables engineers to build smarter test systems. The PXI platform includes 1 GHz-bandwidth vector signal transceivers, fA-class SMUs, TestStand industry-leading commercial off-the-shelf test management software and more than 600 PXI products ranging from DC to mmWave.
