Unisys Corporation

William K Shramko

Mark W Jennion

Gerald J Maciona

Building and testing complex electronic products especially large scale computer systems are handled with control remaining with the owner of the design while a contract manufacturer does the basic manufacturing processes and testing. Nearly all levels of testing are accomplished without sharing high level descriptions of the end product or its features by providing only low level files for test functions. A tester used by the contract manufacturer to exercise the testing function for multiple circuit boards and that tester has numerous features that make it more useful and efficient. The tester has a computer system in it to run the tests using the low level files, and mimics the platform into which the boards will eventually become inserted. Various features provide additional ease of use and functionality.

Test apparatus to facilitate building and testing complex computer products with contract manufacturers without proprietary information

Electronics manufacturers, particularly ones building large scale computer systems, have a need to describe test vectors for third party manufacturers in a low level language description that does not reveal the circuit design to the third party but allows for the third party to build and test the systems, not just with static tests based on BSDL and netlist files, but dynamic tests as well. A conversion process for taking a high level language circuitry description and producing test vectors useable for translation into actual test vectors for testing board-level components of the large scale computer systems is described.

Using conversion of high level descriptive hardware language into low level testing language format for building and testing complex computer products with contract manufacturers without proprietary information

Building and testing complex electronic products especially large scale computer systems are handled with control remaining with the owner of the design while a contract manufacturer does the basic manufacturing processes and testing. Nearly all levels of testing are accomplished without sharing high level descriptions of the end product or its features by providing only low level files for test functions. Testing is accomplished without sharing the high level code descriptive of the system design so confidential information is retained. Testing using the low level data is made sufficient to identify what parts need repair despite the lack of high-level information transfer.

Growing community of inventors

Saint Paul, MN, United States of America

William K Shramko