How Forge Helps Reduce Semiconductor Test Cycle Times

Semiconductor test engineering has a speed problem. For every new chip design that reaches validation, engineers spend weeks, sometimes months, writing, debugging, and iterating on test programs before a single device ever runs on an ATE system. In an industry where time-to-market decides winners and delays cost millions, that bottleneck is hard to ignore.

The Traditional Test Cycle

A typical test development workflow goes something like this. A design team hands off a spec document. A test engineer reads it, writes test code for a specific ATE platform, runs initial simulations, finds edge cases, revises, and repeats. Each pass requires deep knowledge of the device physics and the instrument programming model. A single MEMS accelerometer characterization plan might involve configuring multi-channel source-measure units, programming stimulus waveforms, and building data-collection routines across several instrument drivers, all before any silicon is measured.

This manual process is slow, error-prone, and hard to run in parallel. Senior engineers become bottlenecks. Knowledge lives in people's heads instead of in reusable systems. And when a spec changes late in the cycle (as specs always do), large sections of the test code have to be reworked by hand.

Where Forge Changes the Equation

Forge takes a different approach. Instead of starting from a blank editor, engineers describe what they need to verify in plain language. The platform's AI agent reads the uploaded design documents (datasheets, spec PDFs, characterization plans) and generates production-ready test code targeting the instruments in the lab.

This is not a template system. The agent works through the actual specification parameters, picks the right measurement techniques, generates stimulus and capture routines, and structures the output so it can be reviewed, edited, and run directly. A task that used to take a test engineer three to five days of focused work can reach the review stage in under an hour.

Compounding Gains Across the Pipeline

The time savings add up. Because Forge tracks every task from staging through synthesis, review, and execution, engineers spend less time on project management. The review workflow makes sure that generated code is always checked before it touches hardware, keeping quality high without slowing things down. And when results come back from execution, they feed into the system, building a knowledge base that makes future test generation faster and more accurate.

For teams running dozens of characterization and production test programs at the same time, this means a real reduction in overall cycle time. Early adopters have cut their test development phase by 60 to 80 percent, freeing senior engineers to focus on the work that matters most: failure analysis, yield optimization, and design feedback.

The Larger Picture

Cutting test cycle time is not just about efficiency. It is a competitive advantage. Teams that can validate silicon faster iterate on designs faster, catch issues earlier, and reach production sooner. As devices get more complex and process nodes keep shrinking, the ability to move quickly through test development is becoming just as important as the design tools themselves.

Forge was built for this. To make semiconductor test engineering as fast as the teams that depend on it.