The SPEED7 Processor is housed in an EDHS-BGA case and has 452 contacts. It uses a "Thermally- Enhanced" case which was specially designed for the SPEED7 Processor. It has very good mechanical and electrical features as well as an extremely low thermal resistance. The combination of less power dissipation and the thermal resistance of the case means that the chip temperature under full load is less than 15°C above ambient. Thus, a fanless system is made possible when operating in the standard temperature ranges from -20° to 60°C.

The SPEED7 Processor integrates approx. 5.6 million transistors which means a transistor density of approx. 220,000 transistors per square millimeter. The processor was using robust 0.25µm CMOS-Chip technology.

Illustration:
Shows a segment of the layout plot for the PLC7000 chips. In the centre are the "coarse" transistor structures for the output driver and the protective allocation of the inputs. On the left are the connecting cables (approx. 20µm wide) to the bonding pads and centre-right are the fine signal cables to the core logic.

The goal was only reached by utilisation of modern chip technology and due to a high-capacity and low-loss process architecture. During the development procedure of the chip it was very important to maximise the performance of the input and output stages. A sophisticated On-Chip-power-management for the clock-domains allows a dynamic power-off for non-active circuit parts. We observed an interactive power optimizing strategy throughout the development.

The manufacture of the SPEED7 Processors is undertaken by a worldwide leader for semiconductor production using the latest process technology and testing methods. Due to the Design-For-Testability Method we have been able to reach levels of over 99% pass rates. This has been made possible by the efficient usage of ATPG Tools (ATPG = Automated Test Pattern Generation), and test structures, such as BIST Modules (BIST = Build-In-Self-Test) which was added to manual test vectors.

Of course, all chips pass through different quality tests before their delivery. The chip will be checked electronically on the wafer. Following successful bonding and assembly the chip goes to the Burn-In test. The chip is "burned in" for 24 hours to avoid early failures in service. The chip will then be checked in another final test in order to secure a 100% functionality before shipping.

All processors are 100 % quality tested.