Tech Briefs Magazine - December 2021 - 15

Lab Validation Ensures
Quality and Reduces Time
to Market
Significant time and effort are wasted
when engineers across different teams recreate
software that they could have
reused had it been standardized. Stan -
dardization and innovation help engineers
not only overcome the continuous
schedule challenges in post-silicon lab validation
but also increase test coverage and
ensure the quality of the final product.
Given the right software infrastructure for
lab validation, engineers can focus on critical
validation tasks instead of developing
and debugging software.
Effective standardization solutions can
automate more than 80% of repetitive
tasks to save valuable time for the engineers
in the lab. Moreover, standardization
solutions built on open platforms are
futureproof because they provide multivendor
hardware support and where possible,
multi-language software support.
Additionally, standardization solutions
offer the flexibility engineers need to perform
the variety of measurements to validate
the final product's design.
The following standardization processes
and innovations help engineers focus
on their core validation tasks and maximize
their output.
Silicon Bring-up, Learning,
and Debugging
Bring-up involves powering up a new
chip, establishing communication, and
verifying at a high level if all the major
elements of the chip are functioning. It
mostly focuses on the control of multiple
instruments and sources as well as much
of the register communication. To verify
if the device is working as expected, engineers
need to visualize and analyze the
measured data. With an effective bringup
tool, engineers can perform all these
activities without having to write any
code. Furthermore, when engineers en -
counter unexpected data results, they can
run a variety of experiments to debug the
device. This tool should enable engineers
to perform all these experiments efficiently
without sacrificing versatility.
Automation Using
Standardized and Scalable
Infrastructure
After bring-up and debugging, engineers
execute the automation code to
collect data across the full range of inputs
and environmental conditions. This pro -
cess is called process-voltage-temperature
Tech Briefs, December 2021
Cov
Record and Replay
To record and replay the sequence of device and instrument operations
Benefits
* Bring the device to a desired state with a single click
* Export and reuse scripts in automated data collection without additional programming
* Efficiently communicate with remote collaborators by exporting scripts they can replay
Features that enable bring-up and debugging with zero programming.
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Where is your focus during bring-up?
Debugging
the Device
Where is your focus during bring-up?
high-value validation tasks and minimize
the time they spend on software development
and debugging.
Program Used
for Debug
With compressed timelines, where is your
focus during device bring-up?
(PVT) characterization. The PVT auto -
mation code involves sequencing many
individual actions (steps) in the correct
order. A single measurement might in -
clude steps such as the following:
* Bringing the environmental condition
to the required state
* Configuring the sources
* Setting the device into the specified
mode by writing to its registers
* Turning on the sources
* Measuring the output of the device by
reading the data from the instruments
Engineers must repeat each measurement
by sweeping all the relevant control/input
parameters included in the
product specifications. This entire set of
measurements must be repeated for multiple
devices to characterize the process
variations. Engineers then must inspect
the measurement data collected from all
these sweeps for anomalies, identify their
root causes, and correct them. The final
set of good data is analyzed statistically to
derive the product's specifications, which
are included in the data sheet.
This elaborate process must be automated
as much as possible to reduce
time and effort. By standardizing on an
open and scalable automated infrastructure,
engineers in the lab can focus on
If the instrument references are shared
between the debugging tools and the
automation environment, then the auto -
mation engineer can move between the
two environments in a seamless and efficient
manner during automation code
development. Data collection can last for
many hours or even days. If the data does
not look right at any time, engineers must
pause the process to examine and fix the
debugging tool and then resume the
process without missing a beat.
Design and Implementation of
Abstraction Layers
Choosing the design of the abstraction
layers in the validation software is
one of the most important steps of the
process. It determines the effort and
time involved in accommodating the
typical modifications that must be completed
during validation. When abstraction
layers are properly implemented,
the most common modifications can be
made by changing configurations rather
than rewriting the code. Abstraction layers
also increase the amount of software
that can be reused across product lines.
Typical abstraction layers include instrument,
device communication, measurement,
and test parameter.
When designing the abstraction layers,
engineers must consider not just the
cost of initial development but also the
cost of maintaining the assets and the
ease of debugging while keeping access
open to the lower layers. They must
develop an effective instrument
standardization
strategy along with people
and product strategies.
Rather than overanalyzing the strategy
and design decisions, engineers can start
with the most obvious choices and
expand the scope step by step.
Bring-Up and Debug with Zero Programming
Interactive User Interface
To configure and read from device registers and instruments, and visualize the measurements
Benefits
* No programming knowledge required
* Faster completion of bring-up and debug

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Tech Briefs Magazine - December 2021

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