Skyworks Solutions' Automatic Test Equipment
Environment with Embedded Ch
Skyworks Solutions, Inc.
is a leader in high performance analog and mixed
signal semiconductors enabling mobile connectivity. The company's power
amplifiers, front-end modules and direct conversion transceivers are
at the heart of many of today's leading-edge multimedia handsets.
Skyworks also offers a diverse portfolio of products that support
automotive, broadband, cellular infrastructure, industrial and medical applications.
To automate the testing of its large portfolio of
different products
for different industries,
Skyworks Solutions developed an automatic test
equipment environment called GUTS (Generic Unified Testing Software).
For example, it can be used to
test various power amplifiers by controlling all different kinds of
instruments.
GUTS basically consists of two part, a GUI frond end and a
backend C++ Engine which includes
many instrument drivers.
Embedded Ch is used throughout the entire GUTS application,
including instrument control, data collection, test execution, etc.
Lake Wang, Senior Software Engineer in Skyworks Solutions, pointed out that
"To use GUTS,
our test engineers write test plans --- C++ style Ch scripts that
controls instruments. A typical test plan in
a Ch script consists of functions Init(), Start(),
Measure(), End(), and Closing().
These functions in the Ch script space are called through
an Embedded Ch API Ch_CallFuncByName() in the binary space.
When a test script is processed by the Embedded Ch, it
internally callbacks to the backend Engine again
through the interface mechanism of a script with binary
functions, thus communicating with all instrument drivers.
The simplicity and power of the C++ callback mechanism in Embedded Ch
is unmatched and cannot be substituted by any other commercial parser."
Below is a snap shot of
a C++ script running in GUTS through Embedded Ch.
(click the above image to enlarge).
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"Embedded Ch enabled us to develop an extremely flexible
Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) environment called GUTS.
GUTS is used to control test instruments,
data collection, text processing, etc.
Embedded Ch saves us a great deal of time and
effort in both development and deployment of GUTS.
The standard ANSI C/C++
support allows our users readily to use GUTS without training.
The performance of the embedded C/C++ interpreter
far exceeded our expectations.
The technical support from SoftIntegration
was exceptional and sets a new standard for
other developers to achieve.
We are extremely pleased with our selection of Embedded Ch
as a scripting engine for
our ATE environment."