ATE Test Techniques for Microprocessors’ PC Boards

With the advent of microprocessors and other LSI microcircuits, logic boards are becoming as complex as a complete system of a few years ago. This complexity makes fault diagnosis very difficult. This paper will describe three testing techniques-- one based on software simulation of the circuit under test, another based on hardware simulation and a third based on a combination of these two techniques. The choice depends upon the software modeling costs of complex ICS, the processing power required, the incomplete nature of hardware models, the difficulty of determining test program effectiveness with hardware simulation and the higher costs of test systems offering the combined technique. These tradeoffs must be made by the users for their particular situations. 1 ref.