ASIC Test and Prototyping Primer

When Cadence had purchased the design groups at the Unisys facility in San Diego, they were also required to purchase other support groups, mainly the test group and the failure analysis group.

What was interesting about these groups was that they had some savvy managers. They had managed to keep their groups together during several layoffs at Unisys. The Cadence acquisition was a reprieve from the layoff cycle. However, they realized very quickly that if they themselves did not start to sell their services on their own, Cadence was going dismantle them very quickly.

In the end, both of these groups survived until the San Diego facility was closed in September of 2002. The Failure Analysis group became part of PDF Solutions, which closed the San Diego facility a few years later. The test group became a company known as Test Edge, which is still in operation today. If you are ever looking for ASIC testing and debugging, give them a call:

http://www.testedgeinc.com/

During my time in the test group, I was asked to write a document that described our services. This was used to not only sell our services to customers, but it was also to sell our services to the other facilities at Cadence.

This was a fun assignment because, at the time, we were also allowed to borrow the company's digital camera to take some pictures. We were so enamored that we could take a picture without having to develop it and insert it into a document. It was instant gratification.

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Title: The Test and Prototyping Group
Author: Paul Taubman
Representing: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

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