Implementing IEEE 1641 - a demonstration of portability

For some years now, the Standards Technical Working Group for Automatic Test (STWGAT) has been developing the signal & test definition (STD) standard under the designation of IEEE 1641. In the year that 1641 has been formally released, a UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) sponsored study into the uses of the standard has been undertaken; producing a 1641 compliant test program set (TPS) and proving its portability across multiple, unique automatic test equipment (ATE) platforms. IEEE 1641 may be expressed in many commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) languages, including visual basic (VB), extendable mark-up language (XML) or C++. Two test program sets (TPS) have been produced, one in VB and one in XML (based on automatic test mark-up language (ATML) -test description). Through reference to the 1641 standard, these two test programs are identical and unambiguous in functionality. Just as tests can be described using 1641, so, too, can test resources. 1641 based resource descriptions have been produced for each of the ATE platforms used in this study. Resource management and allocation can be achieved automatically based upon a match of test signal requirements and resource signal descriptions.