Interview
A closer look at SWINDON Silicon Systems
CIE editor, Amy Wallington, went to visit SWINDON Silicon Systems in December to see their facilities and find out more about what they do
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WINDON Silicon Systems is a global leader in the design, test and supply of mixed signal ASICs, sensor interfaces and MEMS pressure sensor solutions for automotive and industrial applications. As the name suggests, the company is based in Swindon and is owned by Sensata Technologies, a global automotive and industrial system component supplier. Richard Mount, director of sales and marketing, welcomed me into SWINDON’s UK headquarters in Royal Wootton Bassett in Swindon to show what the company does and how they are rapidly expanding. “We have been in this office for three years now,” explains Richard. “Before that, we used to be in an old Victorian school building right in the middle of Swindon which was restrictive in terms of the available space. Moving here meant that everything is now all under one roof which makes business much easier. Everyone works very closely together and the team is fundamental to making it right.” The company are global leaders in automotive pressure sensing. Richard says: “Swindon, through Sensata, have about 50 per cent of the global market on tyre pressure monitoring systems. It is EU law now that every new car has to have some TPMS. It started in America with the old Ford Explorer; the tyres kept blowing and legal litigation was proving costly which heralded the introduction of tyre pressure monitoring and it became a legal requirement in the US. In Europe, it came in on the back of the green issue because a vehicle will use less fuel if you have the
12 December 2017/January 2018
correct tyre pressure. It’s also hoped to be legislated in China in the next few years which we are hoping which will grow our business even more in people and revenue.” SWINDON Silicon Systems celebrates its 40th birthday this year after forming in 1978. “It’s a big thing really,” comments Richard. “There are not many semiconductor companies in the UK that have been around for 40 years and have kept their own name so we are quite unique and we are very proud of that. “The company currently has about 140 people, the majority of which are degree+ professionally qualified engineers including quite a few with PhDs, so the level of our expertise is extremely high.”
Everything SWINDON does is custom designed and made; they do not do any standard products. The first stage of making an ASIC is the design process where they work with the customer on a unique specification of their exact requirements. “They come to us and we sit down with them and try to understand exactly what they are trying to achieve. Some customers want things that they don’t really need so we optimise the system specification which results in a cost saving for the customer whilst maintaining performance.” Once the specification has been agreed, the next step is the design and layout of the chip. They then send the design data base off to the chosen foundry and have the wafers and prototypes manufactured. These prototypes are then put through a vigorous evaluation programme back at SWINDON. Once the customer is satisfied
Components in Electronics
that the prototypes meet the agreed specification the device is released for volume production. During the evaluation phase SWINDON’s test development team work on writing the complex wafer probe and automated test programmes that are required in order to be able to 100 per cent test all the functionality of the device. Andy McDerment, production manager, heads the team that conducts production test. He says: “We start in the probe area where every die on each wafer is tested. These are automated machines so we start a batch and it may be left until complete.” Once the wafer probe test is finished, the company evaluate the results of each die. Andy explains: “We evaluate the ones that have passed and if they have only just scraped a pass then we will consider that die to be a risk and subsequently fail it. Statistics show that devices that lie outside a known distribution are potential early life failures, which we as a company strive hard to avoid. It is more cost effective for
us and our customers to fail the die early on than risk it and have it fail later in the field.” Once the wafer probe test has been completed a wafer map is then produced that highlights all of the known good die that can be used for the final packaged ASIC.
The next stage in the process is the assembly house where each individual die is encapsulated into its own individual package. The packaged ASICs are then returned to SWINDON for final automated test and calibration. “We have many ATE machines that are bespoke to test and calibrate the tyre pressure ASICs across different temperatures and pressures and we believe that we are the only company in the UK that have this ability,” says Andy. “The ASICs are gravity fed into the top of the handler and placed within one of four test channels where the devices are then individually electrically tested and calibrated with their associated in package MEMS pressure sensor.
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