Extending computer: aided design into the manufacture of pulse equalizers

A fundamental difference exists between the techniques used to evaluate the performance of a circuit during the design phase and during manufacture. One strives for reality at all cost during design but wants an inexpensive test in the factory. For computer-aided design, a sophisticated performance criterion is usually selected that reflects how the circuit will function when installed in a system. For economic reasons, however, usually only a few simple tests on individual circuits are performed during manufacture. Since it is difficult to devise a simple test that will be indicative of system performance, the tests performed may be inadequate to reveal unsatisfactory units. Frequently, therefore, the designer specifies extremely tight component tolerances so that performance will approximate the nominal design; this practice can lead to unnecessarily expensive circuits.