Re: Automatic Test Pattern Generation in Perl

Ovid has written about this previously in his journal at http://use.perl.org and on Perlmonks here under the title of Testing by Contract - I had mused on this idea previously in my own journal at http://use.perl.org after discovering Class::Contract, but that offered by Ovid and the discussion that ensured is far more interesting and certainly worth your reading.

perl -le 'print+unpack"N",pack"B32","00000000000000000000001001110011"'

Comment on Re: Automatic Test Pattern Generation in Perl

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Re^2: Automatic Test Pattern Generation in Perl by adrianh (Chancellor) on Jul 17, 2003 at 10:27 UTC
I wouldn't class the sort of thing Ovid was talking about as ATPG. You're not generating the tests - you're writing them yourself. With ATPG you're creating test patterns algorithmically. In fact I've not come across the term ATPG outside the hardware world (something I'm only vaguely familiar with because my younger, smarter, better looking brother is an EE :-). As I understand it you use various algorithms to generate patterns of voltages to find potential faults in your circuit. There are big commercial systems for doing this like TetraMAX and FastScan, but people do write their own - in Perl and other languages. For example if you search for Perl in this document you'll find some people using Perl to generate code for MacroTest (an optional part of FastScan). There's a hell of lot of research in the area because hardware test cycles can burn up a hell of a lot of development time. However I don't know hardware so I can't offer any pointers.	[reply]

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Re^2: Automatic Test Pattern Generation in Perl
by adrianh (Chancellor) on Jul 17, 2003 at 10:27 UTC

I wouldn't class the sort of thing Ovid was talking about as ATPG. You're not generating the tests - you're writing them yourself. With ATPG you're creating test patterns algorithmically.

In fact I've not come across the term ATPG outside the hardware world (something I'm only vaguely familiar with because my younger, smarter, better looking brother is an EE :-).

As I understand it you use various algorithms to generate patterns of voltages to find potential faults in your circuit. There are big commercial systems for doing this like TetraMAX and FastScan, but people do write their own - in Perl and other languages.

For example if you search for Perl in this document you'll find some people using Perl to generate code for MacroTest (an optional part of FastScan).

There's a hell of lot of research in the area because hardware test cycles can burn up a hell of a lot of development time. However I don't know hardware so I can't offer any pointers.

[reply]