Virtual instrumentation software applied to integrated circuit testing procedure

Laboratory measurement and acquisition system based on the LabVIEW virtual instrumentation software package, applied to automated procedure for integrated circuit parameter testing, is presented in this paper. Described software controlled procedure is performed on CMOS inverter integrated circuit HCF 4007 UB Hardware configuration of developed solution includes data acquisition card PCI NI 6251 and model of tested integrated circuit, controlled by LabVIEW programming application in PC environment. Multi-channel acquisition card provides generation of test voltage waveforms for inverter circuit inputs and receives voltage signals from integrated circuit outputs. Control software application, developed in LabVIEW 8.0 programming package, performs automated recording and presentation of circuit transfer characteristics, recorded for different supply voltages, including measurement, software analysis and graphic presentation of basic circuit parameters, according to user requirements. This solution eliminates demands for manual measurement of output voltage for each input voltage changing point in circuit transfer characteristic recording procedures, due to providing complete software based automation of these processes. Such approach gives possibility for development of software controlled automated test subsystem or measurement module applicable as a part of more complex ATE systems used in integrated circuit industry production and testing.