The global semiconductor market has witnessed extraordinary growth, because of the demand for different sectors such as automotive, AI, consumer electronics, and telecommunications. This presentation will provide a comprehensive overview of the current semiconductor landscape, highlighting key market data and trends of the industry. While focusing on the socket market, we will explore the market revenue by technology, type and application, trends and forecasts and look into dynamics of demand and supply within Test and Burn-in sockets. We will also talk about advanced packaging technologies, which address performance, power, and integration challenges through innovations like 3D stacking and Chiplet architectures. This presentation aims to offer a holistic view of the semiconductor industry, particularly as it responds to rising technological demands and moves toward next-generation device manufacturing.

The rapid adoption of the latest packaging technologies, particularly for high-end applications, is outpacing the industry’s ability to develop cost-effective test solutions. Choosing the optimal test flow is becoming more complex, especially when testing of singulated die or partially assembled packages is required. In many instances, the supply chain doesn’t have the equipment and consumables solutions the industry needs or will need in the future. This presentation provides an overview of the high-end advanced packaging technologies from a test and cost of test perspective. It also explores the opportunities for suppliers of test and burn-in sockets.

Contact probes are critical for the electrical testing of semiconductors and electronic components, ensuring reliable performance. Our research introduces AuCNT plated contact probes, designed to meet the increasing demand for high-current testing applications.

The AuCNT plating technology combines the conductive benefits of gold plating with carbon nanotubes. This approach enhances probe durability and performance.

Key Features:Durability and Strength, Heat Resistance, High Current Capacity.

The Technology originally targeted for the finer pitch of 0.25 mm or below for Burn-In test, but also demonstrated excellent performance at High Frequency Test and solving most of the issues due to traditional longer burn-in pins.

Traditional burn in test socket are experiencing ball damages, or open failures due to dimensional tolerance of BGA balls and high testing temperature, the poster will address the problems and the solutions.

For AI connector and test socket, and high heat generating system, outstanding technology for test/connector spring probe pins enabling low resistance, high current carrying and high voltage. The pin should be demonstrating performance at the small pitch and space to increase the density, height of board and decrease the size the equipment

In addition to the high performances, irregular high temperatures, vibrating condition and humidity, and harsh operating condition, a specially designed spring probe pin is desperately needed in various industrial areas.

With the huge need for efficient heat dissipation in High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, the conventional thermal interface materials, for example, thermal grease, metal foil, and phase change materials all face serious challenges to be used due to their drying and pumping out problems. Recently developed Graphene- enhanced thermal interface materials (G-TIMs) with extremely high thermal conductivity (between 70 to 200W/Km in the vertical direction) and great thermal stability are clearly a potential alternative for it. The flexibility of physical properties with different softness of this class of material make it possible work in different applications. In this work, a series of graphene-enhanced TIMs with a hardness ranging between 20 and 80 (Shore A) were prepared. A mechanical cycling tool was developed, and mechanical cycling tests with up to 5000 insertion cycles were carried out to evaluate the effect of softness on the thermal and mechanical performance for different potential HPC and AI cooling applications. To mimic the power mechanical cycling, the testing chamber temperature varied between room temperature and up to 90 °C.

iPCM Cloud-Controlled Tool for A Compact Solution on Power Telemetry Abstract:

This presentation introduces the iPCM (Intel Power Consumption Measurement), a compact tool designed for power measurement. The iPCM tool utilizes a cloud-based infrastructure for control and offers the capability to deploy on various customer platforms, enabling remote measurement of desired power rails through the cloud service. Compared to the existing market tool used for platform power consumption validation, the iPCM tool has demonstrated exceptional accuracy with a delta of less than 3%. This solution brings numerous benefits, including reduced debug and validation engineering hours, accelerated product time to market, enhanced accessibility to limited boards, and improved customer self-sufficiency. Currently, there is no other released solution that combines the iPCM's accuracy, price point, and ease of use with remote cloud-based debugging capabilities. The proposed solution focuses on the validation and debug of platform power consumption, specifically highlighting the advantages of utilizing the iPCM tool and its cloud-based capabilities.

The problem of a lack of space for test points on contemporary product designs is more relevant than ever. The aim of the designer is to gain test access by placing as many test points as possible for maximum test coverage on a minimum substrate size. This often conflicts with existing test fixture hardware solutions, which do not allow this due to the size of the spring contact probes that are used.

A solution to this challenge is an advanced rigid needle adapter. This high-precision adapter technology enables in-circuit test, functional test and program flashing of test points as small as ø100µm with a test point spacing of 250µm or 400µm. The advantage of this test solutions for designers, for example, is that the test point spacing is reduced from 2mm to 400µm, and 25X more test points can be placed on the same substrate area.

For contacting larger single UUTs, and panels, rigid needle adapters can be easily scaled and adjusted in size. This allows production to correlate the adapter size to the corresponding production batch within minutes. In this way, qualitative contacting on 0.3 mm test points can be ensured even on 400 mm panels with accommodations for coplanarity issues.

Coupling this adapter technology, with fixtures and testers which incorporate a unique contacting method that is divided into a feed stroke and a contacting stroke. With this approach, there is the advantage for double-sided contacting of the substrate which is first well supported from both sides before the contacting force is applied. As a result, the load caused by the actuation of the test interface can be reduced to a minimum.

Existing elastomer contains conductive paths within the silicone mold, which causes structural interference between the conductive paths. This interference leads to limitations when testing large-sized packages with warpage. To overcome these limitations, introduce ELTUNE-Air, which has independent conductive paths.

The test ecosystem for the processor chips typically includes bring up (validation), automated test engineering (ATE), final test (FT), system level test (SLT) and high temperature operating life (HTOL) tests, typically performed in the same sequence. Historically the foregoing test functions have remained fragmented with respect to the type of socket interconnection. On one end, legacy and familiarity with a given type of socket interconnect factors into decision making, and on the other, it appears that the test industry is risk averse to innovate to a common standard for socket interconnects. Complexity in designing to large package dimensions, accommodating a large number of package pins and their pitch, additional complexities in loading mechanisms to manage many 100’s of kilograms of force on the package, maintaining the integrity of Silicon in exposed die or lidless packages, addressing package warpage, etc., all feed into a design funnel to meet the ultimate goal which is standardizing a common interconnect end-to-end in the semiconductor test ecosystem. While this may seem as an unrealistic goal, recent advances in socket interconnects have shown a path to feasibility and realizing it.

We present an approach to designing a common socket interconnect for all of the aforementioned test functions by using elastomeric sockets. This approach addresses the interconnect strategy for the entire semiconductor test ecosystem irrespective of the package type, i.e., ball grid arrays (BGA) or the land grid arrays (LGA) which are the predominant types of packages in the processor chips category. The elastomer socket interconnect is closely coupled with the type of loading mechanism which can be different in validation, ATE, FT, SLT and HTOL test areas. Therefore the socket interconnect is required to operate seamlessly and reliably across all of the foregoing test types and or loading mechanisms. To accomplish this, we focused on multiple design areas which are, addressing alignment of the socket to the package, a self-levelling loading mechanism, a profiled socket interconnect to deal with package warpage, a partitioned loading approach to deal with exposed die packages, a socket nest design which houses the elastomer socket and provides interfaces to loading mechanism and thermal regulation systems, managing deflections in the circuit board under 100’s of kilograms of forces and maintenance such as cleaning manually or in-line for the automated test environment. Each contact in the elastomer was designed to meet current handling as well as signal integrity requirements for PCIe5 and DDR5.

Enabling Near-DUT Voltage Sense and Control

How to guarantee Hot and Cold junction temperatures during production testing of Integrated Circuits is a challenging problem. This paper analyzes findings for improved IC junction temperature regulation during test for AEC-Q100 grade 0 devices by using passive and active thermal regulation, specialized software techniques to guarantee quality, appropriate materials and components, and thermal zoning.

As faster speeds and higher performance become standard expectations for AI, CPUs, and high-speed computing IC devices, packaging technology is also becoming more complex, with larger multi-chip designs. This introduces challenges such as package warpage, uneven chip heights, and increased heat generation due to higher processing speeds. Testing requirements for IC devices have become more stringent, including the evaluation of test programs, parameters, temperatures, and durations. Common testing methods include final test, system-level, and burn-in etc.

Although TIM is just a small component in the overall testing or package assembly, it plays a crucial role in ensuring rapid heat transfer between the IC device and the thermal head during testing. Ensuring minimal temperature variance between the pedestal and die is essential for accurate and efficient testing.

This paper explores various TIM materials available in the market that are designed to address the demands of high-power, high-speed IC device testing, and analyses the pros and cons of each material.

This presentation explores the thermal optimization of 3D-printable heat sinks designed for hand socket lids, focusing on the use of generative AI and parametric study methodologies in ColdStream, a generative design software for thermal management. As electronic devices shrink and power densities increase, effective thermal management becomes increasingly critical. To address this challenge, we employ optimization tools and additive manufacturing methods to enhance the heat dissipation efficiency of the heat sink.

The first phase utilizes a thermal resistance network-based optimization, designed to efficiently estimate correlations using minimal computational resources. This approach searches the design space for the highest-performing design configuration and manufacturing method.

Once the software has identified the optimal shape and manufacturing method, a detailed CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analysis is applied to further refine and improve the design using generative AI. This step incorporates advanced airflow modeling, temperature distribution, and heat transfer analysis to optimize the TPMS structures used for the heat sinks.

The resulting optimized heat sink achieved a reduction in thermal resistance compared to a traditional pin heat sink. This case study demonstrates the potential of combining generative design and additive manufacturing to enhance thermal performance, especially for low-volume production devices such as custom hand socket lids.

Through this presentation, we will outline the steps taken, the improvements made, and the challenges encountered during the use of ColdStream for heat sink optimization in a hand socket lid. Attendees will gain insights into how the integration of optimization tools and additive manufacturing can lead to significant improvements in heat sink performance, supported by real-world examples of the process and results.

Metals have been used as thermal interface materials (TIMs) for many years. Even though they have a higher thermal conductivity than thermal pastes or polymeric phase change materials (PCMs), there is a need for novel metal TIMs with better thermal performance that can be used in high-power applications. In this work, we will present new types of compressible metal TIMs. Compressible TIMs have a special pattern to address any warping, non-planarities between surfaces that are connecting, as well as CTE mismatch when the material is used as a TIM1 or TIM0 (TIM1.5)..The novel type of the compressible TIM has a specially designed one side pattern that makes this TIM more compressible than any other compressible TIM. It is recommended for more wrapped, irregular or curved surfaces.