Highly compressible representation of test pattern data

摘要

A method for more efficient handling of data used in testing electronic integrated circuits and boards consisting of specifying data in a flat tabular format. Signal data are contained in columns and cycle data are contained in rows. Any given signal in a cycle will typically be a "0" or "1". If a signal does not change from one cycle to the next, the character "0" or "1" is replaced in the latter cycle by the dot "." character. As a result of the "." character replacements, the data is much more highly compressible by standard compression software than before, thus requiring less storage space for the data.