Development of test programs in a virtual test environment

An environment for the efficient development of quality-assured mixed-signal test programs is introduced. The new approach provides links between design and test engineers based on a standard test description language VTML (Virtual Test Modelling Language). The language provides standardized description models for test system resources which can be mapped as well to equivalent simulation models as to real world test system hardware. Methods are provided to check the data consistency of test programs and to validate test program behavior using simulation models