Chip lifecycle / Product types / Test chip or shuttle vehicle

Test chip or shuttle vehicle

Non-product silicon, one of the Hub's ten product types. Each type runs only the lifecycle stages and gates its kind of change needs.

What it is

Non-product siliconSilicon built to learn something, never sold.

A test chip, or a design placed on a shared shuttle wafer, exists to answer a technical question: how a new process behaves, whether an IP block meets its targets in silicon, or whether an architectural idea holds up. It is built, measured and learned from, and it never becomes an orderable part.

Typical triggers

A process, device or IP question that simulation and analysis cannot settle on their own
A new IP block that needs silicon evidence before a product commits to it
Early learning on a process the organisation has not used before
Characterisation data needed to calibrate models or design rules

Examples

An IP characterisation vehicleA small die carrying a new high-speed interface with its control and access logic, measured across voltage and temperature.
A process learning shuttleTest structures and a few circuit blocks placed on a shared wafer to learn a new node before a product design starts.
An architecture proofA reduced implementation of a new compute idea, built to measure power and performance before the product is defined.

Examples are generic: they describe a kind of work, not any company's product.

Register or sign in to read on

The full lifecycle detail, with its charts, flows, tables and every section, is for registered members. Registration is free and takes a minute. You come back to this page afterwards.