Testing the Tester: Specification and Validation Approaches

Abstract

It’s a given that ATE test platforms are complex systems. Many HW and SW elements need to be integrated and work together for successful testing solutions. Too often we define a properly working platform within the context of the tools used to test and validate its behavior. Diagnostics, calibration, and special-purpose validation tools are used to prove a platform’s adherence to specifications. However, these tools and usage conditions are usually far removed from the end-use applications environment. They ignore or bypass many of the interactions encountered by a user’s actual test conditions. In an effort to manage the complexity of these interactions, some approaches try to limit the definition of a properly working tester to one that passes a particular validation standard (instead of meeting specifications in any legal usage).