Advantest brings PXI instruments to event-based IC tester
Rick Nelson, Chief Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 7/26/2006 11:37:00 AM
Representatives of Advantest Technology Solutions (ATES) were on hand at the Design Automation Conference (July 24-28, www.dac.com) to demonstrate the company's Certimax semiconductor design verification system. In its initial configuration, the 80-lb system employs PXI cards to provide 128-pin, 125-MHz test capability. Four systems can operate in parallel to provide 512-pin capability.
Jerry Katz, manager of test technology at the Adantest America R&D Center, demonstrated the system's waveform viewer and editor, which helps to bridge the design-to-test gap by presenting data from the design environment "as is" at the validation stage of the process. Users can quickly edit waveforms (to alter setup times, for example) without having to deal with the complexity imposed at the design-to-test interface by cycle-based big-iron test systems. Katz demonstrated the tester's digital-test capabilities in conjunction with Mentor Graphics (www.mentor.com) ModelSim. He showed how the system can compile a test bench from ModelSim and generate a VCD file with no need for cycleization.
Users wishing to augment digital test with analog measurement capability can simply add analog PXI instruments and invoke appropriate analog source or measurement functions from within National Instruments' LabView, Katz said. A key goal for the Certimax system, he said, is to provide the benefits of an instrument without the complexities of a big-iron ATE system.
Base price is about $1000 per pin.
