How to mitigate hardware obsolescence in NextGen test systems

Author

Tacha, Nathan ; McCarthy, Alex ; Powell, Brian ; Veeramani, Arun

Author_Institution

Nat. Instrum. Corp., Austin, TX, USA

Volume

25

Issue

7

fYear

2010

fDate

7/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

30

Lastpage

36

Abstract

Automatic test engineers are faced with replacing obsolete software and hardware in systems that remain in operation longer than individual components are supported. Replacing obsolete hardware can be especially challenging because of the need to modify test software in order to support new instrumentation. Changes to test software to support new instrumentation might affect multiple areas of the application and require time-consuming development or costly revalidation. This explains how you can mitigate hardware obsolescence with the use of well-designed hardware abstraction layers.

Keywords

automatic test software; NextGen test system; automatic test engineers; hardware abstraction layers; hardware obsolescence mitigation; obsolete hardware systems; test software; time consuming development; Application software; Automatic testing; Decision support systems; Driver circuits; Generators; Hardware; Instruments; Next generation networking; Software testing; System testing; Systems engineering and theory; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0885-8985

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MAES.2010.5546292

Filename

5546292