Socket / Contactor Modeling

	Socket / Contactor Modeling

Today's semiconductor testers are capable of testing components at, or close to the operation speed of the devices. With speeds of these devices at 10 GB/s, soon to be 40 GB/s, this has raised the performance requirements for test interfaces like sockets and contactors. In particular, these test interfaces must have very low parasitics and impedance discontinuties, in order to allow proper testing of high speed devices, with minimal degradation of performance.

SRAM Fix

Test Interface Engineering from GigaTest

	Socket and Contactor Characterization
	Probe Card Characterization
	DUT Board Development Consulting
	Calibration Standard Design

Proper evaluation of these interconnect structures requires accurate measurement of very small impedances over large frequency ranges: a perfect application for GigaTest's characterization methodology. At GigaTest, we prefer to use micro-probing, to obtain a high-bandwidth, low-parasitic measurement on interconnects. By using the calibration capability of the VNA, in conjunction with precise fixturing designed specifically for probing sockets, we obtain very accurate S-parameter measurements that can be used to evaluate the performance of sockets and contactors, as well as other test interfaces like probe cards, space transformers and DUT boards.

The industry has recognized our expertise in this area, and the "GigaTest Report" has become a de-facto standard for evaluating the performance of sockets and contactors. This report includes the measured, calibrated S-parameter data, as well as the extracted model for the contactor leads, which is obtained by optimizing an equivalent RLC model, in order to quantify the parasitics of the socket and contactor leads. The report explicitly lists key performance criteria like self and mutual inductance and bandwidth of the component.

GigaTest Methodology

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