September 14, 2004 – Stone Pillar Technologies, Inc. has announced TestPlanManager, the newest product in its Silicon Insight family of products for developing semiconductor process technologies. TestPlanManager automates the creation of test routines for device characterization and provides capabilities for test library management.

Large technology development test chips require significant engineering effort in the implementation of test plans that are used to characterize dozens, or even hundreds, of devices present on a chip. Manually creating test plans for technology development test chips is a painstaking, error-prone, and labor-intensive task. By automating this process, TestPlanManager improves test plan readability, reduces errors, guarantees consistency between test plan documentation and executable, and reduces engineering effort by as much as 75%.

TestPlanManager automates the work of arcane test coding so that skilled engineers can focus on the creation of quality tests. Numerous aspects of test plan creation that would generally require direct inspection of source code -- such as test application, review, and variation -- are handled via TestPlanManager’s graphical interface. Details about devices, test chips, test die, and wafer maps are all handled by interactive tools that store the complete test plan details in the structured Silicon Insight database.