User-centric digital test architecture

This paper describes a combination of digital test instrument features that improve productivity and performance of digital tests by supporting their specification from the UUT's data sheet. Adaptive hardware features that allow this include: flexible timing, dynamic instrument reconfiguration, automatic handshaking, data compression, serial and asynchronous event handling, and hardware subroutines. These architectural features give the test engineer more flexibility, make test writing more efficient, and offer the possibility of more test coverage and analysis. The proposed modular design approach allows for more configurable and cost-efficient systems.