Teradyne, Inc.

Alan L Blitz

Randall B Stimson

Stephen J Hlotyak

An automatic test system, such as might be used to test semiconductor devices as part of their manufacture. The test system uses instruments to generate and measure test signals. The automatic test system has a hardware and software architecture that allows instruments to be added to the test system after it is manufactured. The software is segregated into instrument specific and instrument independent software. Predefined interfaces to the software components allow for easy integration of instruments into the test system and also easy reuse of the software as the physical implementation of the test system or the instruments changes from tester to tester in a product family.

Automatic test system with easily modified software

This invention relates to automatic test equipment used in the manufacture of semiconductors and to the storage and searching of the named device parameter data used in the testing. A spreadsheet workbook has one or more spreadsheets containing nested levels of named device parameter data. A data manager stores the named data in a memory and searches for the stored named data when appropriate. The data manager has one or more containers each having a mode for storing nested levels of the named data in the form of a binary tree, and also in an ordered sequence vector. The data in the tree is mapped into the ordered sequence vector with numerical indicia defining the position of the named data in the ordered sequence vector. The containers are nested the same as the nested levels of the named data. Each container has a search mode which searches the tree for the named data and uses the mapping indicia associated with the named data to find the named data in the ordered sequence vector. The container then stores the numerical indicia. This search finds the named data and its order in the nested levels.

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Newton, MA, United States of America

Alan L Blitz