Integrating Emulation Techniques Into General Purpose ATE

Testers basedon emulation techniques are not new. They typically use a hardware “Pod” to intercept thecontrol signals from themicroprocessor, allowing theemulation testertcu takecontrolofthemicroprocessorbus. This paper shows howageneralpurpose ATE with clock synchronization and triggering capability can take control of the microprocessor bus using special software, SoftPodTM, rather than special hardware pods This enables the test engineer to use an emulation strategy to develop tests.