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“Semicon Verification Lab Planning” As a Service

In the rapidly evolving Semiconductor industry, timely and accurate product verification is essential for faster time-to-market. This paper underscores the importance of a centralized verification lab planning as a service that ensures timely availability of verification labs and product verification systems by reinforcing efficient forecasts of demand, smart procurement process, providing clear visibility to existing verification systems in the verification labs and a robust asset management system. This comprehensive approach aims to optimize resource usage, facilitate seamless verification processes, and enhance future planning for both verification labs and verification systems.

Insights

Fab & Fabless customers’ need to rigorously verify their products before launching their products into the market.
However, verification labs are not easy to setup for each & every chip at every location. Because non-availability of Verification Lab is increasing the product wait time. In addition, organizations are facing tremendous amounts of loss.
In this whitepaper, we discuss about lifecycle of Verification Lab, challenges of Verification Lab and other dependencies.
This whitepaper provides an insightful technical solution for overcoming challenges mentioned.

Introduction: Semiconductor “Verification Labs” & “Verification Systems”

The semiconductor industry is on a trajectory for substantial growth, anticipated to reach $1 trillion valuation by 2030. It is expanding at a consistent 6 to 10% annually, particularly within the mid-range sector. This surge is primarily fueled by the escalating utilization of AI and the surging demand for EVs, intensifying pressure on semiconductor companies to ensure top-tier quality and timely delivery of substantial volume of semiconductor chips.

Figure 1: Semiconductor industry growth projections

Note: Figures are approximate and source from Mckinsey & Company

Within the semiconductor companies, a spectrum of labs plays an integral role in the design-to-delivery process. There are two types of labs in semiconductor companies. They are:

R&D Labs: They are pivotal in the chip research and design stage
Verification Labs: They are pivotal in the chip verification stage, post silicon stage of chip

Verification labs encompass the following components and provide verification of product features.

Space (racks and benches based on the size of the verification system)
Power
Cooling facilities (natural/forced air and water immersed)

The availability and readiness of these verification labs are of high importance for ensuring timely and high-quality product verification and expediting the time-to-market of the product.

Figure: Illustration of semiconductor verification lab

After confirming the availability of verification lab space, verification lab engineers proceed to construct and configure systems within the lab, making them accessible to verification team for the verification process. These specifically configured systems are referred to as verification systems.

Life Cycle of “Lab Verification” System

The life cycle of a verification system commences with capacity planning (encompasses sequential stages of identifying gaps in existing verification lab facilities) and followed by procurement, build, reservation, verification, release, and eventual decommissioning. In many enterprises, this process is often sequential and disjointed. Here is an overview of the typical flow of verification system provisioning:

Capacity Planning: During capacity planning, verification lab engineers initiate the life cycle by collecting demand for verification systems for at least next two quarters. This aids in identifying capacity gaps, such as space, power, parts and cooling.
Demand Fulfillment: Capacity gaps in each verification system are relayed from the capacity planning stage to the demand fulfillment system. The demand fulfillment system then procures all necessary parts and adds them to asset catalog.
Provisioning: In this stage, verification lab engineers construct the verification system according to specified Bill of Materials (BOM) and notify verification team of its availability.
Verification: Verification team gain access to the verification system, performing necessary verification processes. Following successful verification, verification team inform verification lab engineers to either dismantle the system or release for other verification teams.

Figure 2: Life Cycle of “Lab Verification” System

Challenges in Verification Lab Provisioning and Need for Centralized “Verification Lab Planning” as a Service

Adopting a sequential and traditional approach to verification system provisioning often leads to delays in meeting demands of enterprise. Common causes & challenges of this inefficiency include the following

Manual processes in verification lab hosting demand collection: Leads to ineffective identification of capacity gaps in existing verification lab facilities.
Lack of visibility into existing verification systems: Leads to redundant verification system provisioning efforts and resource wastage.
Lack of visibility into existing assets: Leads to re-procurement of parts and eventual money wastage.

Centralized “Verification Lab Planning” as a Service:

To address above mentioned challenges, there is a critical need for a centralized “Verification Lab Planning” as a service. This service should perform the following.

Automate the collection and processing of verification lab hosting demand details: Helps in identifying gaps in existing verification lab facilities.
Integrate verification lab hosting demand with the demand fulfillment system: Helps in automating the procurement process.
Introduce a discovery feature for existing verification systems: Helps in visibility to both verification lab engineers and verification team.
Enable the reconfiguration of verification systems: Helps in avoiding re-building from scratch.
Implement an efficient Asset Management system: Helps in maintaining up-to-date asset information on verification systems and corresponding parts.
Establish a feedback loop from the Asset Management system to Capacity Planning: Helps in efficient capacity planning.

Figure 3: Verification Lab Planning as a Service. All connected systems

Above mentioned comprehensive approach is important to optimize operations, ensure efficiency, and minimize wastage within semiconductor companies amid their rapid growth trajectories.

Advanced “Verification Lab Planning” as a Service: Optimizing the Verification System Lifecycle

Let’s go through the optimization proposed in each stage of verification system lifecycle.

Capacity Planning and Demand Fulfillment – Working in tandem

Accurate and timely system requirement collection is imperative. The proposed optimization involves the automation of demand collection/processing, utilizing tools like SAP for efficient capacity gap detection.

The following sequence of actions is suggested for the Demand Fulfillment stage:

System BOM requirement data should automatically flow from the capacity planning system to the demand fulfillment system.
Within the capacity planning system, a systematic comparison of requested system parts with the current inventory are conducted.
Parts already available are marked against the verification system to be built.
Unavailable parts trigger procurement requests sent exclusively for those items.

Figure 4: Data collection and flow between Capacity Planning and fulfillment systems

Discovery of Verification Systems:

To enhance efficiency, verification team must gain visibility into existing verification systems. This feature empowers verification team to:

Utilize key and metadata as search criteria to identify available verification labs.
Access information about a verification system's location and availability within a verification lab.

This approach ensures that when a verification system is already identified, verification team can avoid re-building a verification system from scratch.

Within the discovery system, verification users may encounter three scenarios after searching with relevant key/metadata:

No verification system is found with the given search criteria: Verification users request the construction of a new verification system, specifying the configuration.
Verification System is found with a partial match: Verification users request the re-configuration of an existing verification system, avoiding the need to rebuild from scratch.
Exact verification system matching the requirements is found and available in the verification lab: Verification team simply request a reservation.

These features contribute to optimal resource utilization and facilitate the timely provision of verification systems.

Figure 5: Verification system discovery feature and ability to reconfigure existing systems

Asset management and feedback mechanism to capacity planning:

Post-build, the system is incorporated into the Asset Management system, where the following details are systematically maintained:

Verification Lab details
Verification system name and associated tags
Precise location within the verification lab
Power consumption and cooling specifications
Current availability status
End-of-life (EOL) details
Components inside the verification system
Components End-of-life (EOL) details

This comprehensive information is then relayed back to the Capacity planning system, facilitating improved future planning. This streamlined process not only enhances operational efficiency but also minimizes resource wastage, enabling informed decision-making for upcoming capacity planning initiatives.

Figure 6: Asset management system and feedback to capacity planning

“Verification Lab Planning” as a Service: Functional Workflow

The ultimate workflow of the “Verification Lab Planning” as a Service solution seamlessly integrates capacity planning and demand fulfillment systems. It incorporates features to discover and reconfigure verification systems, establishing essential feedback loops for optimal verification lab utilization and the timely provisioning of verification systems. Whether opting for custom-built solutions or selecting Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) options, the approach is tailored to align with the client's existing systems and technology landscape.

Figure 7: Verification system discovery feature and ability to reconfigure existing systems

“Verification Lab Planning” as a Service: High Level Solution Architecture

We propose below architecture to develop a solution which supports the “Verification Lab Planning” as a service.

Figure 8: Architecture Diagram

Each feature of the solution will be a separate service working with Enterprise/Legacy app internally and having its own data source:

Leverage any solution that already exists for capacity planning, demand fulfillment, configuration management and asset management and expose them as service. Develop/upgrade solutions that are required.

Services will be autonomous, loosely coupled and highly scalable and available
Enterprise legacy data will be refreshed to the service data sources via a separate ETL platform on a regular basis
API gateway acts as control gate to the services
Rich UI for better user experience
Persona based graphical dashboards to provide visibility/status of verification lab and verification systems
DevSecOps practice for secured yet highly agile deployment

Conclusion

Efficient and cohesive capacity planning and demand fulfillment systems coupled with streamlined dataflow and enhanced configurability of verification systems, are crucial for optimizing verification lab planning within the semiconductor industry. An efficiently managed verification lab offers several key benefits:

Resource Optimization: Ensuring verification labs are utilized optimally, maximizing efficiency.
Improved Financial Visibility: Clear insights into financial aspects for better decision-making.
Informed Decision-Making: Access to valuable data for making well-informed strategic choices.
Streamlined Procurement: Enhancing the efficiency of the procurement process.
Accelerated Product Delivery: Facilitating faster and more efficient product delivery timelines.

Providing Verification Lab Planning as a Service not only improves the operational efficiency of verification labs but also supports broader business objectives by enabling smarter resource allocation, faster decision-making, and ultimately expediting product time-to-market.