An automated test equipment (ATE) system includes a plurality of test blades each coupled to a test blade connector and mounted on a circular track; a central reference clock (CRC) having an origin point at a center of the circle; and a clock/sync connector coupled to the CRC through a zero skew clock connection to one or more sync buses, wherein each instrument utilizes the CRC to coordinate its testing process with another instrument.

An automated test equipment (ATE) system includes a plurality of test blades each coupled to a test blade connector and mounted on a circular track; a central reference clock (CRC) having an origin point at a center of the circle; and a clock/sync connector coupled to the CRC through a zero skew clock connection to one or more sync buses, wherein each instrument utilizes the CRC to coordinate its testing process with another instrument.

An automated test equipment (ATE) system includes a plurality of test blades each coupled to a test blade connector and mounted on a circular track; a central reference clock (CRC) having an origin point at a center of the circle; and a clock/sync connector coupled to the CRC through a zero skew clock connection to one or more sync buses, wherein each instrument utilizes the CRC to coordinate its testing process with another instrument.

Data is replicated into a memory cache with non-naturally aligned data boundaries to reduce the time needed to generate test cases for testing a processor. Placing data in the non-naturally aligned data boundaries as described herein allows replicated testing of the memory cache while preserving double word and quad word boundaries in segments of the replicated test data. This allows test cases to be generated for a section of memory and then replicated throughout the memory and tested by a single test branching back and using the next strand of the replicated test data in the memory cache.

An instruction provider for providing a sequence of instructions based on a representation of a sequence of test vectors. Each instruction defines the provision of at least one test vector to a device under test. The instruction provider is configured to identify in the representation of the sequence of test vectors subsequences of test vectors which occur at least two times in the representation of the sequence of test vectors. Furthermore, the instruction provider is configured to store the identified subsequences in a dictionary memory structure and to provide the sequence of instructions such that the sequence of instructions includes at least a first instruction defining a first provision of a first subsequence of test vectors stored in the dictionary memory structure and a second instruction defining a second provision of the first subsequence. The first instruction and the second instruction reference to the same entry of the dictionary memory structure.

Test cases for testing speculative execution of instructions are replicated into a memory with non-naturally aligned data boundaries to create a non-contiguous instruction stream to efficiently test a processor. Placing test cases with test code and test data in the non-naturally aligned data boundaries as described herein allows test code to test speculative execution of branches. The test case includes a branch with a hint bit set to cause the hardware to mispredict the path of the branch to cause speculative execution of test code, bad code or erroneously execute data. The processor can then be tested to see if it properly flushes the speculatively executed code upon taking the opposite branch of the mispredicted path.

Data is replicated into a memory cache with non-naturally aligned data boundaries to reduce the time needed to generate test cases for testing a processor. Placing data in the non-naturally aligned data boundaries as described herein allows replicated testing of the memory cache while preserving double word and quad word boundaries in segments of the replicated test data. This allows test cases to be generated for a section of memory and then replicated throughout the memory and tested by a single test branching back and using the next strand of the replicated test data in the memory cache.

Data is replicated into a memory cache with non-naturally aligned data boundaries to reduce the time needed to generate test cases for testing a processor. Placing data in the non-naturally aligned data boundaries as described herein allows replicated testing of the memory cache while preserving double word and quad word boundaries in segments of the replicated test data. This allows test cases to be generated for a section of memory and then replicated throughout the memory and tested by a single test branching back and using the next strand of the replicated test data in the memory cache.

A system and method are provided for testing features of an embedded system. The system includes a low-powered computing device communicatively coupled to a control application interface, a sensor interface, and a robotic interface. The low-powered computing device may receive sensor signals generated during a test, provide sensor data corresponding to the sensor signals, receive commands for the test, and provide instructions for movement of a robotic handler corresponding to at least one of the commands for the test. The system also includes a computing device communicatively coupled to the control application interface, an image processing interface, and a database interface. The computing device may receive sensor data, receive image data corresponding to images of the embedded system captured during the test, receive tests capable of being performed, and provide commands for the test.

An approach for erasing data being stored in a data storage apparatus is provided, which may be provided e.g. as an apparatus, as a method, as a system or as a computer program. A sequence of uncompressible data is obtained fulfilling predetermined criteria, which includes a statistical measure indicative of compressibility or uncompressibility of the sequence of uncompressible data meeting a predetermined criterion, wherein the sequence of uncompressible data is divided into one or more blocks of uncompressible data, the sum of the sizes of the one or more blocks of uncompressible data being larger than or equal to the storage capacity of the data storage apparatus. The one or more blocks of uncompressible data is provided to the data storage apparatus for storage therein to overwrite the data currently stored in the data storage apparatus.