Accelerating Automated Test and Protocol Aware ATE Through Open FPGA-Based Solutions

摘要

Using commercially available off-the-shelf technology, open FPGA architectures provide a simple-to-use platform that may be easily used to speed up development and deployment of production test solutions for mixed-signal and system-on-a-chip (SOC) devices. FPGAs may be used to accelerate data processing, perform complex parametric analysis and binning, and even implement protocol aware test methods effectively removing the overhead of host system interaction gaining substantial improvements in efficiency and test time. Standard interfaces, such as PCI Express and JESD204B combined with IP from FPGA vendors make FPGA acceleration of complex processing tasks easier than ever. Coupled with programming environments or abstraction layers such as the NI LabVIEW FPGA Module, the complexity of coding applications in VHDL or other HDL languages is abstracted away such that deep domain knowledge is no longer required to successfully design and develop using FPGAs. This paper demonstrates examples that contrast the test performance of traditional automated test equipment (ATE) with a modular instrumentation platform when an open FPGA is introduced into the test flow. This paper shows how these same open FPGA platforms are available on platforms that are easily scaled to benchtop verification and validation of devices allowing for better, faster correlation between validation and production test.