September 19, 2011 -- The Ridgetop Group, Inc. today introduced ProChek, an new system for rapid and inexpensive characterization of any semiconductor manufacturing process. With ProChek, any fabless IC supplier can independently collect critical reliability data concerning many of the deep sub-micron (DSM) effects that adversely affect IC performance, yield, and life expectancy.

ProChek is a complete system for generating, collecting, and analyzing reliability data about the transistors that comprise all semiconductor-based electronic circuits. The ProChek Test Coupon is a digitally synthesizable array of devices under test (DUTs), typically up to 1024 DUTs in a 1-mm² test chip, consisting of transistors with user-specifiable geometries for any target fabrication process.

The Test Coupon resides on a small test interface card which in turn connects to ProChek's compact Benchtop Test System controlled by the Host Controller. The transistors are stressed for temperature- and voltage-related effects through programmatically controlled mechanisms. As a result, ProChek can measure negative/positive biased temperature instabilities (NBTI/PBTI), time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB), hot carrier (HC), threshold voltage (VT) shift, stress migration (SM), electromigration, and other major DSM effects. ProChek also supports single-event (SE) and total ionizing dose (TID) radiation measurements.