TRADITIONALLY, EACH MANUFACTURED instance of an integrated circuit (IC) is subjected to several testing steps before it is sent to customer. (See Section II for description of a typical industrial test flow.) All of these testing steps are to maintain a high quality of chips shipped since customer returns not only require new chips to be shipped to replace the defective ones, but too many of them can also result in poor reputation, loss of business, and sometimes even legal actions. Hence one of the primary functions of each testing step is to minimize defective chips from being shipped (also known as test escapes). However, each testing step also adds significant cost to an IC. Therefore, it is desirable to eliminate any unnecessary test. In fact, if an entire testing step can be skipped without loss of IC quality, that would provide significant cost reduction not only from removing the test application cost associated with that step, but also from eliminating any infrastructure required to carry out that test in an industrial environment.
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机译：传统上，集成电路 （IC） 的每个制造实例在发送给客户之前都要经过几个测试步骤。（有关典型工业测试流程的描述，请参见第 II 部分。所有这些测试步骤都是为了保持出货芯片的高质量，因为客户退货不仅需要运送新芯片来更换有缺陷的芯片，而且太多的芯片还会导致声誉不佳、业务损失，有时甚至会采取法律行动。因此，每个测试步骤的主要功能之一是最大限度地减少有缺陷的芯片（也称为测试逃逸）。然而，每个测试步骤也会大大增加IC的成本。因此，希望消除任何不必要的测试。事实上，如果可以在不损失IC质量的情况下跳过整个测试步骤，那么不仅可以消除与该步骤相关的测试应用成本，还可以消除在工业环境中执行该测试所需的任何基础设施，从而显著降低成本。
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