Electronics are getting more sophisticated and complex every day. Chips, boards, and the systems they comprise are increasingly difficult to design. Companies engaged in electronic product development have regularly employed platform-based approaches in their design projects for more than two decades since the inception of the CAD Framework Initiative (CFI). Platform-based design offers many benefits including faster time to market, increased engineering productivity and cost efficiency, improved design reuse, and faster analysis and insight that supports better decision-making.

Beyond these benefits, the trend toward disaggregation of the semiconductor and electronics industries served as a major driver for platform-based design. The demands of higher design complexity made vertical integration of the entire development and manufacturing process impractical — hence, the rise of fabless semiconductor companies, chip foundries, and contract electronics manufacturing services businesses. With disaggregation came the ability to focus engineering resources on a company’s core competency and competitive market differentiation. Design platforms that deliver a complete solution for a particular problem or domain area help to reinforce core competencies.

If platform-based design is so successful, why are platform-based test approaches not more widely available and adopted? After all, product designs must be tested before going to market. The same electronics industry trends apply in the case of test. So what is stopping test teams from benefiting from the same type of platform approach as design teams? The answer is siloed workflows and homegrown test environments that inhibit easy data sharing.

Much like early computer-aided engineering and design products (CAE/CAD), which were proprietary in nature, electronic test and measurement is a closely held business. Many companies build proprietary, in-house methodologies and tools to tackle their specific test challenges without regard for the resources required to maintain them. Recent Keysight research results reported in “Realize the Future of Testing and Validation Workflows Today ”confirmed this point, with 91% of respondents saying they created in-house tools for testing and verification. Test engineers follow tried-and-true methods. They resist change from legacy ways to a more open and connected approach.

In the design world, interoperability standards and tool frameworks accelerated the movement to open systems and software solutions. They bridged the gap between logical and physical abstractions and their respective workflows. The collective work of the CAD Framework Initiative during the early and mid-1990s helped make EDA tools and methods more accessible and interoperable. Frameworks also provided the means to better manage the ever-growing volumes of design data. While the design world is now accustomed to the benefits associated with interoperability and platform-based methods, the test world still suffers from silos and poor handoffs between different steps in the work process.

Test platform and framework architecture requirements

Because the design world adopted open frameworks and interoperability, the test community should embrace a platform-based approach built around open frameworks and interoperability, too. For example, Keysight and Nokia recently launched OpenTAP , the open Test Automation Project, as a first step in this direction. OpenTAP provides an open-source, scalable architecture that enhances and accelerates the development of automation solutions within the test and measurement ecosystem, with demonstrated success in 5G network equipment manufacturing.

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