Programming approach with parallel capable instruments for test efficiency

Throughput demands and cost-down pressures involved with modern functional testing necessitate a trend towards a parallel test paradigm. Parallel test techniques can be employed by test engineers to overcome these challenges. The benefits of conducting tests on multiple units/subsystems concurrently are to maximize instrumentation utilization, increase throughput and reduce execution time. This paper will outline a strategy for implementing parallel tests and provide some practical program development guidance and techniques which will allow test program developers to take full advantage of parallel capable systems.