The Automated Test Blog

In February, I wrote about the new mobile internet and how our online behavior would radically change based on the ubiquity of mobile devices with internet connectivity.  I recently read a column on MarketWatch by John Dvorak that also spoke on this subject.  In his commentary, Dvorak asserts that there will be four critical trends in the computer industry in the coming decade:

• There will be a major platform shift away from the current Wintel machine
• Mobile devices will become more and more important
• Internet connectivity will be done mostly on mobile devices, primarily the cell phone
• Cloud computing will dominate the century

Those of you that have a mobile device with elegant internet connectivity (I’m an unabashed iPhone fan myself) have no doubt witnessed this change first hand.  My PC is no longer my primary portal to the internet – I read most of my news and do nearly all my google-ing, ebay-ing, Wikipedia-ing, and now, even FaceBook-ing, on my mobile device.  I’m actually more accustomed to interacting with the internet on my phone now than I am on my computer.  And we’re really only in the second generation of the mobile internet.  Add better user interface through brighter OLED displays, more sensors, haptics so you can ‘feel’ objects on the screen (Blackberry announced one attempt at this today with their new touchscreen ‘Storm’), and broadband connection speeds through WIMAX and LTE, and imagine the capability that will be delivered on a mobile device.

Of course, since I work in the test and measurement industry, I can’t help but think about what effect this change in the consumer industry will have on ours.  For one, there is a lot of sophisticated technology on these devices to test, and the pace of innovation is only increasing.  So, design and test engineers need rapid development platforms that can adapt to these changes faster than ever.  I believe that this trend will affect our industry in an even more profound way as well.  Today, the PC is the primary business machine – it is our data storage hub, our desktop publisher, our presentation aid, our engineering design workstation, and our business dashboard.  As mobile computing and internet devices become pervasive in everyday life, how is this likely to change?  What will cloud computing mean to the engineering community?  This is a subject I’ll be thinking a lot about and plan to share some thoughts on in a later blog. 

But for now, I need to get back to the internet to do some research on wireless standards.  And, since I’m writing this on my laptop, that means time to shut down my PC and pick up my iPhone!

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.

I was recently invited to give a talk at the VLSI Test Symposium titled “Migration of PXI Instruments into Semiconductor Test“. The session focused on emerging trends in semiconductor ATE and on work that is currently going on in both vendors consortia, to migrate PXI into semiconductor test applications. The presentation covered the key challenges currently facing engineers that are validating and testing increasingly complex devices such as SoCs and SiPs. As I previously blogged, Protocol Aware ATE is a new technique for testing these complex devices at a system level. In the presentation, I also covered existing work to build semiconductor ATE based on PXI, including examples of augmenting existing ATE, creating testers with a PXI measurement core, and work by the Semiconductor Test Consortium on a Portable Test Instrument Module, or PTIM. The PTIM initiative is designed to provide a way to add ancillary measurement capability to existing ATE platforms. The STC has been evaluating various options and has the desire to standardize PTIM on an exiting industry standard. PXI has been proposed as the PTIM platform and is currently being discussed at the Global STC Conference this week in San Diego. This proposal will enable ATE customers and vendors to leverage the large commercial investment in PXI and extend ATE capability by using the 1500 existing PXI modules currently available.

I just finished reading the book Bill and Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company. Its a good read that focuses on the personal story of how two engineers built the most successful high technology company of their generation. Its also a good reminder of how much Hewlett and Packard laid the groundwork for the current generation of technology companies. Among other things, they pioneered “Flex-time”, the “Open Door” policy, “Management by Walking Around”, profit sharing, employee stock purchase plans, casual Fridays, “10% time” MBOs, company barbecues, and the cubicle (but don’t hold that last one against them!). All of us in the technology field owe a lot to those two pioneers.

Last week, I was in China for a conference. The economy continues to boom there; its amazing to see how much has changed since my last trip just two years ago. The skyline in Shanghai has grown immeasurably, the piracy and knock off brands have been pushed ‘underground’ (though, its still pretty easy to get a fake Rolex), and the evidence of China’s growing middle class is apparent - its almost as easy to get a real Rolex now at the many upscale shops around town. But one of the most pronounced changes is the growing pollution in Shanghai and Beijing. I only flew through Beijing, but I couldn’t even see the terminal from our plane as we taxied in. As one of my colleagues noted, you could look right at the sun, which was only a soft glow behind the yellow smog. Shanghai wasn’t quite as bad, but as we drove into the city, we all noticed our sinuses clogging and a distinct itch in the back of our throats. Another colleague attempted to take a jog in the city, but gave up after a few blocks.

So that raises the question that everyone has been asking: How is Beijing going to host the world’s premier athletic competition in a mere few months? The Chinese have instituted a decade long plan to clean up Beijing’s air, but opinions vary on how well it has worked so far (and my experience last week would suggest that it hasn’t). There are also more drastic contingencies planned, such as shutting down factories, restricting automobiles, and even seeding clouds to force rain, in an effort to “cleanse the air”. Some athlete’s aren’t so confident - one of the world’s premier marathon runners today announced that he may pull out of the Olympic due to health concerns related to the pollution.

So what’s the long term solution to the pollution in China and elsewhere around the world? Probably not restricting traffic or seeding clouds. The problem will be ultimately solved through consumer demand and engineering innovation, or green engineering . Consumer demand is what is causing the huge uptick in green products and corporate sustainability plans. Sure, there is a lot of hype out there (now called “Greenwashing“), but the net effect of all the focus on environmental sensitivity is a positive one. Even more sustainable are the discoveries and innovations in the scientific and engineering community. China’s pollution, for example, is primarily the result of coal power plants (a new plant opens in China every week to 10 days) and automobiles. Both of these industries are seeing huge investments in research to fund cleaner, more sustainable alternatives. The global investments in renewable energy reached $100B in 2006 and its projected to grow to more than $750B in the next 10 years. Research abounds in more efficient solar, wind, and even wave energy production. There is also a large investment in researching and productizing alternative fuel and zero emissions vehicles.  We don’t yet know which of these innovations will prove most successful, but innovation, combined with a capitalistic system which rewards it, will ultimately triumph.  Its only a matter of time before these inventions are not just a novelty, but a economically sustainable business delivering zero emissions but also better performance and lower cost of ownership than their fossil fuel predecessors. It might not be in time for the Beijing Olympics, but hopefully it will be in time to clean the air for the next generation of China’s urban population.

Wireless mobile devices will fundamentally change the way we use and interact with the Internet. As I’ve posted before, I am a unabashed iPhone user. And I’ve started to notice some curious things about my use of the Internet now that its with me all the time and easily accessible. For one, my Internet usage has gone up by an order of magnitude. I don’t think I’m exaggerating - I literally mean 10x. And let’s be clear, I was already a heavy Internet user. Now I use it 10 times more. This also means I access the Internet on my phone at least 10 times more than I do on my PC. I’ve grown so accustomed to the device that I find myself surfing the web on it while sitting in front of my laptop. I have also noticed that my expectations for Internet content has changed. For example, my expectation for real time content has gone up dramitically. I check news sites like cnn.com several times each hour and expect news updates. No new headlines in the last 20 minutes? Maybe I should try another site. I also notice that I use the device to augment my own knowledge on the fly by searching acronyms, names, etc., while in conversation or in a meeting. I don’t think I’m at all alone in this trend: Google recently reported that 50 times more traffic from iPhone users than from other mobile devices. Think about that - 50 times! When you make a tool like Google more accessible, dramatic things can happen. I’ve also talked to several colleagues (NI has a density of iPhone users that I doubt is topped anywhere outside of Cupertino), and they report a similar phenomena.

So, the question is, what is driving this change? I think first and foremost, we’re starting to really see the impact of ubiquitous wireless connectivity. The iPhone happened to make the full Internet available in way that is as good or better than the experience on the PC. Once the Internet makes the jump to wireless devices, the dynamic of the Internet will really change. The PC will quickly become irrelevant as an Internet device - the number of mobile devices (>1 billion per year) dwarfs the number of PCs (about 250 million per year). As Bolaji Ojo of EEtimes recently stated in his article Wireless is everywhere, ignore it at your peril, “the search is over for the next killer app…it is wireless”.

As an extension of my own personal iPhone observations, I think the new wireless Internet will have some of the following attributes:

• Usage an order of magnitude greater than the current web;
• Significantly increased demand for real time information;
• A two way communication portal, not just an information source (Web 2.0);
• Optimized primarily for mobile devices, not PCs.

It will get even more interesting as the wireless data bandwidth explodes with standards such as WiMAX and LTE. 2008 should be a fascinating year for wireless, particularly, the wireless Internet.

OK, time for the last of my 5 trends in test for 2008:

Emulation-Based ATE That Improves System-on-a-Chip and System-in-a-Package Testing

As semiconductor devices become more complex, the process of testing each part completely with a traditional vector-based methodology is increasingly difficult. Complex systems-on-a-chip(SoCs) and systems-in-a-package (SiPs) require a system-level functional test more closely related to testing components placed on a printed circuit board than a typical chip test, but they still require the high speeds demanded in production test for the semiconductor industry. The strategy of testing a device by emulating actual real-world signals provides a better method of functional test for these types of high-speed systems. This emulation-based ATE, or also termed “Protocol-Aware ATE” during last year’s International Test Conference, combines FPGA-based hardware to emulate the rest of the system in real-time with the pin electronics found in traditional ATE. This lowers the total cost of test through better use-case coverage and improves the user’s ability to debug failures. I explained this idea in more detail in a recent blog post. In 2008, I expect more vendors to incorporate elements of emulation-based tests into traditional tester architectures and for more users to incoproate platforms currently used in functional test, such as PXI, into chip validation and test applications.

As I stated in an earlier blog post, I’m planning to discuss one of five industry trends per blog entry over the next few weeks. My 4th trend is:

The Explosion of Wireless Standards
Test engineers are facing new challenges as the use of wireless technolgies is rapidly expanding. This was a hot topic during the recent CES 2008 conference. One article covering CES, stated “Today’s young people might be called the wired generation, but judging from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show they might not have to deal with actual wires for much longer.” Below are few examples of products that have traditionally been “wired”, but are now becoming “wireless” devices:

• • Apple Time Capsule, which is a 1 terabyte wireless hard-drive using 802.11n.
  • GM Vehicle-to-Vehicle technology, cars are becoming wireless network that can broadcast position, speed, heading to surrounding cars.
  • Samsung flat-panel wireless TV, that receives its data from an 802.11n transmitte

As Wireless transitions from a vertical industry into a horizontal application, more and more test engineers will be faced with the challenge of testing RF wireless capability. Soon, RF instrumentation could become as ubiquitous as general-purpose instruments such as digital multimeters. This growth in adoption requires test engineers to learn wireless protocols and keep pace with the rapid introduction of new standards. This trend was reflected in the 2007 Test & Measurement World Salary Survey (which I blogged about late last year), in which subscribers across engineering disciplines were asked to identify the top technologies they are being required to learn. Among the top responses were WLAN and WiMax.

As I stated in an earlier blog post, I’m planning to discuss one of five industry trends per blog entry over the next few weeks. My 3^rd trend is:

Growing Popularity of FPGA-Enabled Instrumentation
Another area experiencing rapid expansion in the test industry is the increase in system-level tools for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). FPGAs are powerful because they are inherently parallel, deterministic, and reliable and can be defined and reconfigured in software. While FPGAs are used inside many embedded designs, and even standalone instruments, users are not typically given access to reprogram them. More manufacturers are beginning to include open FPGAs on modular instruments and are giving test engineers the means in software to reprogram them according to their requirements. With this capability, test engineers can embed a custom algorithm into the device to perform in-line processing inside the FPGA or emulate part of the system that requires a real-time response. Historically, most test engineers do not have expertise to program FPGAs because they familiarity with hardware description languages like Verilog or VHDL which use low-level syntax to describe hardware behavior. New system-level tools are emerging that provide test engineers with the ability to rapidly configure FPGAs without writing low-level HDL code. LabVIEW, for example, can target onboard FPGAs and synthesize the necessary hardware directly from a graphical LabVIEW program, dramatically reducing the complexity of the code development. I’ve been amazed at the things our customers, who are often domain exprerts, but not experts in hardware design, have been able to accomplish with LabVIEW FPGA.  Examples include testing RFID devices performing bit-error-rate testing (BERT) of military communication protocols.

As I stated in my last blog, I’m planning to discuss one trend per blog entry over the next few weeks. The second trend in Test and Measurement is:

Growth of Software-Defined Instrumentation

One issue facing test engineers is that test instrumentation is not updated as rapidly as the devices being tested. The functionality of these complex devices is being defined by the software embedded in them, such as the Apple iPhone, which gives design engineers the ability to add features faster than ever before. This is increasingly challenging for many test engineers because most stand-alone instruments often lack the measurement capabilities of the most recent standards due to the fixed user interface and firmware that must be developed and embedded in them.
Thus, test engineers are turning to a software-defined approach to instrumentation which gives them the ability to quickly customize their measurement algorithms and user interfaces to meet specific application needs and integrate testing directly into the design process, further reducing development time. PXI is the example of a widely used software-defined instrumentation standard for building modular, reconfigurable high-performance automated test systems.

Kiran Unni, Frost & Sullivan Measurement & Instrumentation research manager, recently confirmed that PXI is influencing this trend when she stated, “The adoption of tools such as PXI is an indicator that companies recognize the benefits of moving toward software-defined instruments. The savings being realized in capital equipment, system development and improvements in system efficiency all contribute to reducing the per-unit cost of test, directly influencing the bottom line.”