Patent ID: 9703658
Date: 2017-07-11
CPC Classifications: G01R,G06F

Claim:
1. In a yield analysis software tool in a computer, a method for identifying failure mechanisms based on a population of scan diagnostic reports, wherein the population of scan diagnostic reports are generated by testing a set of manufactured integrated circuits, the method comprising: the yield analysis software tool in the computer using a mixed membership model to compute a topic distribution for each portion of each scan diagnostic report and a feature distribution for each topic, wherein the mixed membership model comprises (1) a first set of latent random variables that represent topic distributions for portions of scan diagnostic reports, (2) a second set of latent random variables that represent feature distributions for topics, and (3) a third set of observable random variables that represent features in the population of scan diagnostic reports; and the yield analysis software tool in the computer identifying failure mechanisms based on the computed topic distribution for each portion of each scan diagnostic report and the computed feature distribution for each topic, wherein the identified failure mechanisms can be used to improve integrated circuit manufacturing yield.