Stuff MemTest, this is the hard-core way!
Testing thousands of memory chips a day is probably as enjoyable as having root canal work using a garden hoe. So, of course, companies such as GeIL will look for some sort of automated system…except that fully automatic machines drop in at around a cool US$3,000,000 - putting them out of reach of smaller memory-makers.
But what can you do if you want to up production? It's a Catch 22 situation… you need the machine to be able to test more chips accurately and quickly but have to be shipping in volume to be able to afford the machine. Well, GeIL took another path and just went and designed its own hardware for the job.
And, doing it that way, cost GeIL around a tenth of the price of a machine bought off the shelf. Better still, what the company got was a machine built to its own specs. Although the tester is currently alone in its room, there will soon be another three joining it - so it looks like GeIL is going to be seriously ramping up production.
But no machine is perfect and what you can't afford to do is bin a chip just because it's been declared dodgy by some jumped-up automaton. So GeIL double checks and triple checks before discarding any chip as a dud.
The GeIL lab people first use semi-automatic machines. If the chip is still giving erroneous results, they then slot it into a test module and bung that into one of these mainboards. And if THAT doesn't do it, they take it outside and beat the hell out of it with baseball bats… alledgedly.
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