Bridging the gap between Design and Test Engineering for Functional Pattern Development

Historically, functional patterns supplementing structural test methods were derived from simulation data with little communication between design and test/product engineering. These teams are often located in different areas, time zones and working environments. Experience shows, that the functional tester pattern generation process is very tedious, time consuming and error-prone, and involves extensive manual pattern modification. The automation of this process is dedicated to improve this situation with introducing a newly developed 'Tester API'. This AN enables a highly flexible, and extensible flow for injecting test specific information into a tester pattern. It provides enough information to support simplified initial pattern debug on the ATE and results in final tester pattern generated without any hand modifications. Designed for reusability on product derivatives and retargetability, to different ATE platforms the 'Tester APF is introduced to bridge the knowledge transfer gap between the verification team creating tester patterns and the team implementing the test execution on the actual tester hardware.