Use of a field programmable gate array for education in manufacturing test and automatic test equipment

Abstract

A novel approach to education in manufacturing test and automatic test equipment is described that makes use of a Xilinx XC4000 series field programmable gate array (FPGA). Automatic test equipment is first used to configure the chip as a desired circuit and then to apply test vectors to test the circuit for "manufacturing defects." The chip can be configured as either fault-free or faulty, and several different types of functional faults can be injected. Use of the programmable device enables education in use of automatic test equipment to be combined with education in generation of effective test vectors for fault detection and diagnosis and also enables different classes to use the same device and load board to represent different circuits. This approach is suitable for both academic and industrial environments and should be particularly useful for customer training by manufacturers of automatic test equipment.