Presentation at VLSI Test Symposium
June 5th, 2008 by Eric Starkloff
I was recently invited to give a talk at the VLSI Test Symposium titled “Migration of PXI Instruments into Semiconductor Test“. The session focused on emerging trends in semiconductor ATE and on work that is currently going on in both vendors consortia, to migrate PXI into semiconductor test applications. The presentation covered the key challenges currently facing engineers that are validating and testing increasingly complex devices such as SoCs and SiPs. As I previously blogged, Protocol Aware ATE is a new technique for testing these complex devices at a system level. In the presentation, I also covered existing work to build semiconductor ATE based on PXI, including examples of augmenting existing ATE, creating testers with a PXI measurement core, and work by the Semiconductor Test Consortium on a Portable Test Instrument Module, or PTIM. The PTIM initiative is designed to provide a way to add ancillary measurement capability to existing ATE platforms. The STC has been evaluating various options and has the desire to standardize PTIM on an exiting industry standard. PXI has been proposed as the PTIM platform and is currently being discussed at the Global STC Conference this week in San Diego. This proposal will enable ATE customers and vendors to leverage the large commercial investment in PXI and extend ATE capability by using the 1500 existing PXI modules currently available.
The Impact of Hewlett and Packard
April 20th, 2008 by Eric Starkloff
I just finished reading the book Bill and Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company. Its a good read that focuses on the personal story of how two engineers built the most successful high technology company of their generation. Its also a good reminder of how much Hewlett and Packard laid the groundwork for the current generation of technology companies. Among other things, they pioneered “Flex-time”, the “Open Door” policy, “Management by Walking Around”, profit sharing, employee stock purchase plans, casual Fridays, “10% time” MBOs, company barbecues, and the cubicle (but don’t hold that last one against them!). All of us in the technology field owe a lot to those two pioneers.