LOW-COST CONFIGURATION FOR MONITORING AND CONTROLLING PARAMETRIC MEASUREMENT UNITS IN AUTOMATIC TEST EQUIPMENT

摘要

Pin slice circuitry used in automatic test equipment is disclosed. The pin slice circuitry includes a portion implemented using CMOS technology and a portion implemented using bipolar technology. The CMOS portion includes a plurality of timing generator circuits, digital sigma delta modulator circuitry used to generate digital bit streams representative of analog reference levels, and programmable digital signal processing circuitry. The bipolar portion includes driver/receiver channels, a parametric measurement unit, and decoder circuitry, which produces the analog reference levels from the digital bit streams generated by the modulator circuitry. The analog reference levels are used by the driver/receiver channels and the parametric measurement unit; and, the digital signal processing circuitry is used to monitor and control levels produced by the parametric measurement unit. The disclosed pin slice circuitry has the advantages of reduced size and cost as compared with conventional pin slice circuitry.