The project addresses the shortage in microelectronics engineers with skills in testing of mixed-signal circuits for multimedia/telecom market.

The project aims at providing test training facilities at a European scale in both initial and continuing education contexts. This will be done by allowing the academic and industrial partners of the consortium to train engineers using the common test resources centre (CRTC) hosted at LIRMM (Montpellier, France). CRTC test tools include up-to-date/high-tech testers that are fully representative of real industrial testers as used on production testfloors. At the end of the project, we aim at reaching a normal operating of about 16 engineers/year/centre. Each trainee will have attend at least one-week training using the remote test facilities of CRTC.

Objectives:
The microelectronic industry suffers a shortage of microelectronic engineers with skills in test development, ranging from simple awareness of test problems to the full skill and competence in IC testing.

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The training resources in this field are insufficient, however, for instance in France they are limited to 150 trainees per year. It is the objective of the present project to implement a European network for test education, based on the existing French experience and infrastructure in this domain, while the students can be trained locally in each node

Work description:
EuNICE-Test will consist of a common test resource centre, namely the CRTC hosted at LIRMM (Montpellier, France), and nodes at academic centres in Spain, Italy, Germany and Slovenia. Very high cost Automatic Test Equipment is provided at the centre in LIRMM by the industrial partner. The nodes will be equipped with workstations, and with a server with test development software and remote connection to the test centre. In this configuration the test software development can be carried out locally in each node, while the CRTC equipment for the physical test is available via the remote connection.
The project is planned over 2 years. Professors from the nodes will first be trained to industrial test on an Agilent 83000/93000 ATE at CRTC/LIRMM, and then provide the same training to their own students. A Web documentation, including a movie showing set-up handling, will complete the student training. Finally, the industrial partner of the project will train academic participants to specific additional industrial test techniques (mixed-signal, memory) for preparing a further specialisation of the academic centres.

Milestones:
Four new centres of competence in Europe (Spain, Italy, Germany, Slovenia) for up-to-date education and training on industrial test.
About 64 new trainees per year in industrial test. Specialisation on hot topic test techniques in each academic centre of the project