The Semiconductor Testing Bottleneck

Semiconductor testing is a non-negotiable part of chip production, ensuring functional correctness, performance, and reliability before a device reaches the customer. As chips become complex, featuring more cores, advanced packaging, heterogeneous integration, and safety-critical applications, testing must evolve in scope and depth.

In recent years, tests have come under the spotlight not because they fail but because they are doing more than ever. That growing role introduces new constraints in time, equipment, data, and methodology, which appear as bottlenecks.

This edition unpacks the causes of semiconductor testing bottlenecks, why they are not always bad, and how the industry responds.