A flexible PC-controlled analog/digital test set for CNNs

A flexible test set that allows PC-controlled analog and digital measurements of a test object is described. The test set is modularly structured and enables an individual constellation depending on the testing object such as a CNN chip. Analog and digital signals can be transferred to and from the object. The communication to the PC is realized via a standard interface. For the PC, a test program language (TPL) that is easy to handle and allows flexible and completely automatic testing of a chip has been developed. The results of the measurement (e.g. DC characteristics) can be graphically visualized. For dynamic measurements the bottleneck consists in the data transfer to the PC and the processing of the test program interpreter. To overcome this problem, special hardware modules which allow a cyclic or linear output of analog and digital signals up to 10 MHz have been developed. This core consists of a FIFO, which is preloaded before the processing. The output rate is controlled by a clock and different modules are synchronized via trigger signals