It is the policy of OMNI Engineering Services Inc. not to disclose customer names and/or proprietary details of projects without the client’s release to do so.

Design a tester using LabView to communicate with and gather parameter data on an ASIC prototype for the animal research industry. Because this particular ASIC was very different from any previous chip and because the design specification was being developed simultaneously with the tester, we needed a design that was very modular and very easy to modify. The tool needed to be delivered in phases so that testing of functional blocks could begin well before the the entire tester was finished. The finished product would be used as a functional tester for an entire wafer of ASICs.

A scripting language was developed in conjunction with the customer to drive a state-machine. States would easily be added and modified as the language and desired functions were developed. Multiple front panel GUIs would display the specific input and output parameters for different types of test. We worked intimately with the customer engineers to stay abreast of changes and new developments.

The product performed as desired during the development stages and was later modified to run the wafer test and data acquisition as the functional tester. The scripting language had in excess of 100 specific commands; stored test data and test results to a database.

LabView 6i
PC with 2 NI data acquisition cards
Custom ASIC development board
Custom communication board