Source measure unit enhances semiconductor testing

“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.”

Chip makers have adopted the Semiconductor Test System (STS) for its throughput, performance at cost and footprint on the production floor.

The PXIe-4163 SMU 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 product features include up to 24 channels in a single PXI Express slot, +/- 24V per channel, up to 100 mA source/sink per channel and 100pA current sensitivity.

The SMU also offers up to 100kS/s sampling rate and update rate, SourceAdapt for minimising overshoot and oscillations, interactive configuration and debug software, up to 408 high-precision SMU channels in a single PXI chassis (4U of rack space).