Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
HIL testing is nothing to sneeze at
How well I know! I'm not sure what the acronym stands for, but the meaning is clear from context. I used to call it KUS - "Known Universe Simulation" - when I was designing test systems for guided missiles. The DoD doesn't trust new-fangled techniques like in-circuit component testing (new, as in 20 years old), and wants the ATE to simulate the environment surrounding the UUT in real time. I maintain, and research supports me, that if a circuit is designed correctly and assembled correctly using good parts, it will work exactly as designed. If it doesn't, the design is flawed. But at whatever level of integration I was asked to test, I had to design and build hardware that exactly duplicated the electrical environment of the next assembly level, and program it to emulate every possible response. Even after proving that in-circuit tests actually were better than the KUS approach, catching more errors than the traditional method, catching flaws at lower levels of assembly, I was still required to build and program equipment to simulate the known universe for final sell-off. That requirement turns a $200,000 piece of ATE into a $5 million hardware. DoD is a dinosaur... "...a photo album is like Life, but flat and stuck to pages." - Shog9
