Test and measurement devices cover a spectrum of equipment implementations, ranging from large automated test equipment (ATE) that evaluate hundreds of devices simultaneously, to small handheld testers technicians use in the field.
Driven by market dynamics for profitability amidst ever increasing device under test (DUT) complexities, OEMs are demanding, on a per pin basis, both the maximum flexibility/functionality and the highest pin density per component. Altera® FPGAs are key components providing this functional flexibility. Additionally, several technical trends are emerging that influence future equipment architectures:
- Movement towards open architecture hardware and software platforms
- Virtualization of test environments, from emerging technology infancy to end of life maturity
- Migration from proprietary parallel to standardized serial component interconnects (HSIO)
These trends are driving test and measurement OEMs toward one of three implementation architectures:
- Chassis Based—a passive backplane with heterogeneous modular cards
- Modular Based—a single board computer with PCIe modules for application-specific functionality
- Portable Devices—FPGAs with embedded CPU(s), implementing all processing functions
