Product category: Design and Development Hardware
News Release from: Integrated Measurement Systems (IMS) | Subject: Gemini MS
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 22 April 2002

Tester tackles complex high-performance ICs

Gemini MS is the next-generation engineering validation test system for mixed-signal and SoC devices from Integrated Measurement Systems (IMS)

Designed to reduce turnaround time from first silicon to production release, Gemini MS provides designers with an engineer-friendly interactive tool for rapid device debug, characterisation and failure analysis of complex SoC designs. Gemini MS combines the advanced digital features of IMS' flagship Vanguard system with a comprehensive mixed-signal software test development environment called IMS-View and a variety of analogue instrument options that cover a full range of resolution and sampling frequencies from DC to 2.4GH",.

"SoC designs are commonly integrating a digital core with multiple analog cells onto a single chip", said Jack Frost, general manager of IMS' SoC Business Unit.

"The debug and validation step is becoming the major bottleneck in getting a new design into production.

Using Gemini MS, designers can debug first silicon in their lab using intuitive software tools that are integrated into the EDA flow and are designed for interactive debug, thereby speeding the overall design-to-production process.

The system continues our commitment to providing high-speed engineering validation testers specifically optimised for the engineering environment, while expanding Credence's leading portfolio of design-to-production test solutions for semiconductor manufacturers".

Gemini MS features 336 I/O digital pins at data rates to 330Mbyte/s plus 96 pins of analogue I/O and 16 independent device power supplies.

Fast clock channels can be added to provide eight clocks at up to 330MH",.

Standard with Gemini is the integrated Gemini sync module (GSM) that provides 16 channels of instrument clocks and triggers fully integrated into the base system software.

The GSM module ensures low jitter instrument clocking that is fully synchronised to the digital pattern, enabling fully coherent analogue test techniques to be used that are faster and more accurate than conventional noncoherent testing.

IMS-View is an icon-based test development environment that contains over 250 standard test functions for digital and analogue instrument control, a mixed-signal DSP library, and interactive instrument drivers for each analogue instrument option available.

Using IMS-View's interactive debug environment and comprehensive icon-based library, designers can construct their tests using built-in high level digital and analogue test icons to reduce SoC debug and validation time by as much as 80% over conventional programming methods.

Gemini MS is currently shipping to select customers, and volume shipments are set to begin in the third quarter of 2002.

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