As recently discussed in a post by Rick Nelson of Test and Measurement World magazine, the Semiconductor Test Consortium (STC) has begun work on defining a Portable Test Instrument Module (PTIM) - a standard plug-in module for performing ancillary measurements on existing semiconductor ATE. My colleague, Luke Schreier, delivered a presentation at the last STC global meeting that was very well-received which proposed PXI as a suitable specification to build from. The business case is very compelling - traditional ATE architectures are built to accommodate the densest and highest speed test pins possible - 1 kilowatt of power per board is not uncommon. This is necessary for the high speed digital electronics needed to test the latest processors, for instance. When you need to add some audio or RF measurements into the system, however, the infrastructure can be overkill. Moreover, to fully integrate an instrument into a tester requires expertise of the ATE vendor, so to make these measurements, the vendor may be required to invest significantly in development of measuement functionality already available on the open market, just in other form factors.
It is interesting to me that the semiconductor test industry is recognizing some of the features we designed into the original PXI specification. In fact, one of the slides we used to use in the early days of PXI showed a set of rack and stack instruments on one side and a “big iron” semiconductor tester on the other, with PXI right in the middle. The point was that PXI borrowedconcepts from both of these markets - the measurement quality from box instruments, and the card modular form factor and integrated timing and synchronization from semiconductor ATE. It looks like after 10 years, its finally come full circle.