Solutions to current digital testing problems

A model that describes how differences in interface and device propagation delays affect channel-to-channel skew performance is presented. A cost-effective digital test-system architecture, based on this model, is described. This architecture provides superior timing performance, while requiring only periodic maintenance calibration. Two ways to improve effective digital test rates are discussed. The first of these is to use high-speed disk storage within the digital test system. This can help to overcome the limitations imposed by slow host-computer operating systems. The second is a hardware-based data formatting procedure which reduces the excessive time required to perform digital data formatting operations