Semiconductor Manufacturing Overview

The process of manufacturing a semiconductor product starts with producing a semiconductor wafer which is a thin slice of semiconductor substance which is the basis of making of integrated circuits.  Integrated circuits are created by patterning multiple levels of semiconductor materials on top of the base wafer.  The wafer is patterned into an orthogonal system of individual integrated circuits referred to as "dice".  Finally one or more dice are packaged into an package.

To monitor and control the manufacturing processes requires the collection and analysis of a very large amount of data.  The data is captured by "testing" at various steps in the manufacturing processing.  Electrical test structures are included on wafers in the scribe grids or die to measure representative sets of simple components such as resistors, transistors, diodes, and capacitors.  The completed die are tested to see if it meets design specifications.  After assembly the packaged units are tested again to determine if the packaged part meets design specifications  The die and packaged testing are typically performed with automated test systems.