Electrical Engineering Department M. S. Final Oral Defense



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Electrical Engineering Department
M.S. Final Oral Defense

Automatic Test Program Generation Tool for Mixed-Signal Device Interface Boards


by

Venkataramanan Kalyanaraman



September 30, 2005

9:00 AM


GWC 353
Committee:

Dr. Bruce Kim (chair)

Dr. Youngjoong Joo

Dr. Bertan Bakkaloglu


Abstract

Every mixed-signal integrated circuit (IC) that is fabricated needs to be electrically tested to assure the reliability and quality of the product. This is achieved through a test that is performed by the automatic test equipment (ATE). To configure the generic ATE to the specific needs of the IC, a device interface board (DIB) is typically used in the industry. All electrical tests for the IC are performed through the DIB. The device interface board contains several hundred passives, relays and active chips. These components could fail due to voltage stress, thermal cycling and lifetime limitations during the production test cycle. To maintain the high production throughput, the device interface board must remain trouble-free during the test cycle. When the device interface board fails to perform, the test engineer writes hand-coded programs to test the DIB for fault diagnosis. This process is highly labor intensive and could take up many man months.



This thesis describes the design and development of a tool for automatic test program generation for mixed-signal device interface boards. The DIB netlist, component data and ATE resource information are used to distinguish between testable and non-testable circuits. A new approach called the Block Level Functional Testing was used to develop the tool. A commercial grade production tool has been implemented using real device interface boards used in the industry. Furthermore, a test translation platform was developed to directly code the mixed-signal ATE in different native tester languages. Electrical testing is one of the major cost factors in the development and manufacturing of electronic components and systems, with estimates ranging up to 50 percent of the product. The proposed test tool is expected to have a pervasive impact across the entire semiconductor electronics industry.




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