Today’s test engineers face unprecedented demands as semiconductor designs grow more complex and product cycles accelerate. Advanced packaging, chiplet architectures, and AI accelerators are reshaping the landscape, yet engineering resources remain fixed. Traditional approaches to scaling productivity by adding headcount no longer apply.
While cost of test is always a consideration, ensuring quality and yield for these high-complexity devices has become the bigger concern. With more defects to detect—at wafer probe, final test, and across die-to-die interconnects—engineers need precision, coverage, and agility to ensure complex systems perform exactly as intended before they reach customers.
In this environment, success means reducing uncertainty, and the solution lies in smarter tooling and streamlined workflows that scale engineering productivity and efficiency.
The Weight of Complexity
The pressures are real and multifaceted. Fixed engineering resources are expected to deliver on increasingly complex product portfolios and shorter time to market windows, sometimes managing dozens or even hundreds of designs in a year.
That’s not just a handful of test programs; it’s a sprawling landscape of unique devices, configurations, and expectations. With the rise of chiplets and advanced packaging techniques, the process is no longer as simple as wafer probe and final test. It’s multi-stage, multi-insertion, and full of edge cases that require careful coordination and debugging. Add to this that test techniques are also evolving with these new devices, requiring new approaches that necessitate iteration and adjustment.
Test teams must now validate not just individual dies, but entire subsystems stitched together mid-package. New interconnects introduce new failure modes. Thermal behavior, power performance, and even inter-die communications require verification. And at every stage, the risk is the same: a single bad die slipping through can compromise the whole package or system.
In the past, companies could throw more engineers at the problem. But productivity doesn’t scale linearly with team size. The bigger the team, the more time gets lost in coordination, duplication, and debugging, so even if companies could hire more engineers, it wouldn’t necessarily help. The real challenge is unlocking more output from the same team. That’s where smarter tooling and modern development practices come into play.
Foundations Matter
For decades, Teradyne’s IG-XL software has been the trusted backbone of production test. It’s stable, widely adopted, and core to the debug and test execution experience across platforms like UltraFLEXplus and J750. Customers rely on IG-XL for native multisite capabilities, intuitive APIs, and powerful flow control that’s flexible enough for thousands of tests with complex conditional logic.
But in today’s landscape, customers want scalability and stability. And they don’t want to abandon what’s working. That’s why Teradyne is evolving its approach in a way that supports existing users while unlocking the next wave of tools. Many customers can’t afford to swap out core systems mid-cycle, especially when requalifying test software takes time to validate. That’s why the IG-XL platform continues to evolve steadily, serving legacy needs while enabling what comes next.
For teams ready to modernize their development environment, Teradyne now offers optional support for .NET and Visual Studio, a massive leap forward from VBA scripting. Using C#, engineers can write test code using object-oriented design, run unit tests, and leverage the full power of modern IDEs, including integrated GitHub Copilot support. It’s a future-ready option for teams ready to embrace more advanced programming practices, without leaving behind those who prefer simplicity.
Layering Modern Solutions on Top of Legacy Strengths
Teradyne has built an ecosystem of modern tools that augment what’s already in place. The company’s PortBridge tool bridges the gap between design and test with a suite of features, including protocol libraries, design file support, remote connect, and debug tools that can be used all the way into production environments. In one example, a customer got I3C up and running in under an hour—no deep dive required.
Teradyne’s Oasis suite streamlines test program development with powerful tools for debugging, collaboration, auditing, and optimization. Its command-line interface integrates seamlessly with Dev Ops CI/CD Pipelines, driving engineering efficiency through automation. In a world where engineers are collaborating across regions, chips, and product families, these kinds of workflow accelerators can make the difference between launch delays and launch success.
The key here is that choices made in the test stack are optional. Customers can adopt new capabilities when it makes sense for them—on their terms, at their pace, and without disruptions to proven workflows.
Real Gains, Real Stories
These tools aren’t abstract concepts; rather, they are proven and deliver real, measurable benefits. Marvell, a leading provider of complex SoCs for AI, cloud, automotive, and connectivity devices, leveraged PortBridge to significantly reduce their development time, as detailed in this case study on our blog. NXP Semiconductors also accelerated time to market with PortBridge, improving integration and validation efficiency as highlighted in our recent case study. Adoption of PortBridge continues to grow, and in every case, we have seen significant gains across a variety of workflows. Whether the goal is onboarding new interfaces, ramping faster, or debugging more efficiently, these kinds of productivity gains translate directly into competitive advantage.
Looking Ahead: the AI Frontier
Test is also beginning to benefit from the same AI-powered acceleration seen across other industries. One such initiative is Teradyne’s MyInfo Copilot, a generative AI chatbot that delivers fast, reliable answers from our MyInfo and eKnowledge documentation, available to all. And while deeper AI-assisted debugging and automation tools are still under exploration, the direction is clear. Intelligent assistance is coming, and Teradyne is leading the way.
Tailored Evolution, Not Forced Revolution
At its core, Teradyne’s strategy is simple: support engineers where they are and help them grow when they’re ready. Some teams need stable, legacy workflows. Others want modular test libraries, DevOps-style pipelines, or a full modern IDE. And increasingly, some want all of the above.
Teradyne is bridging the gap by offering tailored software tools and solutions that allow our customers to change at their own pace. Solving today’s toughest test challenges is about building solutions to handle what’s next while allowing our customers to adopt these solutions when it makes sense for their workflows.
Ed Seng is the Data Center and Client Business Unit Manager at Teradyne. With over 20 years experience in engineering, applications, and marketing roles, he has developed test solutions for leading edge SoCs, and high speed digital and serial interfaces. He has also guided product direction for software, instrumentation, and new ATE platforms. In his current role, Ed manages the ATE roadmap for Teradyne’s digital product line. He holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University.
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