Testviewz.com

Testviewz.com is a web site related to manufacturing test and diagnosis of digital integrated circuit devices. The site features technical material authored or co-authored by Dr. Bernd Koenemann, accumulated during his over 25 year long industrial career in digital test technology and Electronic Design Automation.

Although Testviewz.com is a mostly personal endeavor, it may be possible to arrange for occasional education/consulting services on demand.

Dr. Bernd Koenemann

Dr. Bernd Koenemann is a retired Engineer with a Scientific background, who spent more than 25 years in engineering, management, and executive positions at leading companies in the Information Technology and Semiconductor industries.

In 1977, Dr. Koenemann received his Dr. rer. nat. (PhD) title in Theoretical Physics, specializing in extra-terrestrial plasma physics, from the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany. He subsequently evolved into an Engineering career by joining a VLSI test technology project at the institute of Prof. Dr. W. Engl at the Rheinisch Westfaelische Technische Hochschule (RWTH), Germany's premier technical university, in Aachen, Germany. There, he co-developed BILBO, a pivotal self-test concept for digital semiconductor devices.

In 1980, Dr. Koenemann was hired into a research position at Honeywell, Inc., in Minneapolis, MN (USA), where he eventually became the technical manager of the Computer Aided Design (nowadays called EDA) part of Honeywell's Very High Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC) program. The CAD flow included all design steps from the behavioral synthesis of processing units to the fracturing of layout shapes for e-beam lithography. He was instrumental in the successful completion of VHSIC Phase 1 and in helping to win a very substantial Phase 2 follow-on project.

In late 1984, Dr. Koenemann joined the illustrious Design For Testability (DFT) department headed by Dr. T. W. Williams at IBM Corp. in Poughkeepsie, NY (USA). Although the focus at IBM was on DFT techniques, the time there included many opportunities to meet and work with some of the industry's most influential technical minds in the larger field of EDA, as well as a close association with the industry's leading semiconductor technology and manufacturing capabilities. He initially focussed on digital self-test techniques and methods, primarily for the companies ES/9000 data processing system and later for a super-computer project. One highlight of the latter project was a fully functional at-speed self-test running at over 500MHz. In addition to the focus on self-test, Dr. Koenemann was instrumental in the launch and the technical architecture of IBM's advanced Automatic Test Pattern Generation (ATPG) and fault simulation software fro at-speed testing. One unique feature of this system is a fully integrated timing analysis sub-system and associated techniques that enable a more accurate timing for more stringent delay tests. These features still form the back-bone of the so called "True-Time" test capabilities now offered by Cadence Design Systems. During the same time, Dr. Koenemann also developed new encoding methods for test data compression, which have revolutionized modern ATPG technology, and have helped to overcome severe test time and data volume limitations in the manufacturing test of highly complex integrated circuits. He was honored by IBM with an Outstanding Technical Achievement Award and a promotion to the Senior Technical Staff Member level.

In 1995, Dr. Koenemann decided to take a hiatus from IBM and joined LogicVision, Inc., a start-up specializing in Self-Test, in San Jose, CA (USA). Here he worked, among other things, on the board-level self-test of embedded system-level memories, and started to investigate possible links between the DFT design software and the manufacturing test environment. One related approach was a more formal definition of memory self-test data log formats that could help automate memory failure diagnosis. Dr. Koenemann during that time also helped to initiate and define a Core Test Language (CTL) project in the context of the IEEE P1500 core test standardization effort. In addition he became involved in business and strategy issues and was promoted to Vice President of Products and Solutions.

In 1999, Dr. Koenemann re-joined IBM in San Jose, CA (USA) to head the DFT department and to facilitate the introduction of test data compression technologies in IBM's commercial ASIC business. In recognition of this work, he was promoted to the prestigious Distinguished Engineer level, an executive-level position on the technical side of IBM's dual-ladder job categories.

In 2002, IBM's Test Automation department was acquired by Cadence Design Systems, Inc., in San Jose, CA (USA), and Dr. Koenemann joined Cadence as a Fellow. Here he became primarily interested and involved in investigating the technical and commercial possibilities of automated logic diagnosis as a yield improvement tool.

Finally, in 2004, Dr. Koenemann joined Mentor Graphics Corp. in San Jose, CA (USA) as Chief Scientist in the DFT group, primarily working on diagnostics-related technical advances. He retired from the company in October 2005.

Dr. Bernd Koenemann is the inventor or co-inventor of several patents related to the field for digital testing. He authored and co-authored numerous technical papers and presented at major conferences in the field. Three of his papers (on Self-Test, Delay Test, and Data Compression) have been included in the compendium of the most significant papers from the first 35 years of the International Test Conference (ITC). Dr. Koenemann was the invited keynote speaker at the European Test Symposium (ETS), the Asian Test Symposium (ATS), and the International Test Conference (ITC). He held the invited Award Luncheon speech at the International Symposium for Testing and Failure Analysis (ISTFA). In addition, he presented and co-presented several tutorials at major conferences in the field, and contributed a chapter on DFT to the "Electronic Design Automation For Integrated Circuits Handbook" by Lavagno, Martin, and Scheffer.