Design and implementation of a mixed-signal embedded DSP system

At Texas Instruments, integrated circuits in production are continually becoming more power efficient and faster. The time associated with testing these designs, say with a with Taradyne test platform, represents a large cost of the overall price of these integrated circuits. This paper discusses the design and layout of a compact mixed signal printed circuit board using a digital signal processor (DSP) that can be used in the test environment. In general, we live in an analog world, but the processing and transfer of information is typically digital. Mixed signal designs offer the best of both worlds since these designs can take advantage of the processing power of a DSP, while operating in close proximity to the analog signals. The paper presents a discussion of our design along with a picture of our mixed signal board; more detailed discussions and pictures may be viewed at http://ee.tamu.edu/~mbyeary/mixedsignal.html