HP Brings Gigabit Technology to Low-CostMicrocontroller Testing for Under $2K/PIN
Hewlett-Packard Company recently announced a new test series that brings gigabit technology to low-cost microcontroller (MCU) testing for under $2,000 per test channel. The HP 83000 MCU series is the newest addition to HP's successful HP 83000 semiconductor test system family. The HP 83000 MCU tests the full range of microcontrollers and embedded controllers and is compatible with existing models.
MCUs are highly sophisticated and include precision-analog building blocks, flash and other embedded memory cells, as well as high-voltage and even power-control modules. They often have special low-voltage requirements, such as power-down modes for battery-power management. These factors make MCUs particularly challenging to test, and the trend is toward even higher chip complexity. As a result, overall performance requirements will increase along with the need for low-cost and low-cost-of-ownership test systems. In addition, the extremely competitive nature of the MCU market is forcing manufacturers to ramp up volume production while keeping costs down, accentuating the need for greater test-system integration for single-insertion testing of MCUs and systems-on-a-chip.
A foundation of the MCU series is HP's test processor-per-pin architecture, which supports dynamic switching between vector/digital, algorithmic/memory and analog test functions. Each channel contains a test system of its own. Having all resources on a per-pin basis eliminates the communication overhead during testing, which is key to increased throughput.
The HP 83000 MCU series is packaged in a testhead-only design, giving it a zero-footprint and improving manufacturing test-floor utilization. This design uses HP's proven water-cooled technology to reduce drift and other thermal effects, providing high accuracy and reliability.
HP's new SiteMatch technology, optimized for embedded flash-memory test, gives users the ability to test up to 64 devices in parallel. For MCUs with typical pincounts, the new technology can save 25 percent of total pin electronics costs. In addition, one site's slower subtest no longer delays other sites' testing processes, thereby increasing overall multisite throughput.
The MCU series offers two separate timing systems to generate signals at the device under test (DUT). The first is optimized for flexibility as needed by 8- and 16-bit MCUs; the second is optimized for higher data rates, up to 300Mb/s for 32-bit MCUs and embedded controllers.
Pay-per-use allows customers to purchase a lower-performance test system for current use with the option of buying higher performance levels as needed for newer, more complex devices. The MCU series offers pay-per-use for systems configured with initial frequencies ranging from 12.5MHz single-cycle I/O (50MHz clock, 62.5Mbit/s data rate) up to 100MHz single-cycle I/O (200MHz clock, and 300Mbit/s data rate).