Industry Expert Blogs

The Mayflower Steps, where the Pilgrims are believed to have embarked on their journey to America, are located in the beautiful Barbican area of Plymouth, a small town in the southwest of England. As the lone American working for Moortec, a British company based in Plymouth, I stood and stared at them this past September. Separated by a few yards of distance but 399 years of history I found myself contemplating what the Pilgrims would think of our reality and how it compared to their own. As those brave souls stepped onto a tiny boat for a very dangerous and months long voyage across the ocean, what would they have thought of the technology that would have allowed them to cross that gap in hours, or talk instantaneously with someone halfway across the globe. But as different as our worlds are one absolute constant across time is the need for test, and failure to do so had a profound impact on their now famous journey.

At the recent Silicon Valley DFT and Test Conference I gave a talk entitled, “Real World Challenges of Today and Tomorrow on Advanced Node Technologies” in which I made the case that as critical as testing is to handling modern design challenges, the need for test is at least centuries old. The example that I used was that of those same Pilgrims coming to America, and how their experience 399 years ago demonstrates truths that are still relevant today.

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