Automatic test equipment architecture providing odd sector size support

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12332829-B2
Application number	US-202318128872-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 30, 2023
Priority date	Nov 30, 2022
Publication date	Jun 17, 2025
Grant date	Jun 17, 2025

Abstract

Automatic test equipment (ATE) configured to test devices under test (DUTs) can include a host device tester, one or more load boards, and one or more host bus adapters (HBAs). The host device tester does not support odd sector sizes and/or non-standard sector sizes. The one or more load boards can be communicatively coupled to the host device. The one or more HBAs can be communicatively coupled between respective load boards and one or more respective devices under test (DUTs). The one or more load boards can be configured to communicate with respective HBAs using one or more first communication protocol interfaces. The one or more HBAs can be configured to communicate with the respective DUTs using one or more second communication protocol interfaces. The HBAs can be configured to translate commands and data between the host device tester and the one or more DUTs that support odd sector size or non-standard sector size.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An automatic test equipment (ATE) apparatus comprising:
a host device tester, wherein an operating system of the host device tester does not support odd sector sizes or non-standard sector sizes; and
a load board communicatively coupled to the host device tester, wherein the load board includes,
a host bus adapter communicatively coupled between the load board and a device under test, wherein the load board is configured to communicate with the host bus adapter using a first communication protocol interface, the host bus adapter is configured to communicate with the device under test using a second communication protocol interface, and the host bus adapter is configured to translate commands and data between the first communication protocol interface and the second communication protocol interface; and
a field programmable gate array configured to generate at a hardware level repeatable test patterns sized to fit an odd sector size or non-standard sector size of the device under test.

2. The ATE apparatus of claim 1 , wherein:
the first communication protocol comprise a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) protocol; and
the second communication protocol comprises a serial attached small computer system interface (SAS) protocol.

3. The ATE apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the device under test is operable to store data using a sector size selected from a group consisting of 520 bytes per sector (BPS), 528 BPS, 4104 BPS and 4224 BPS.

4. The ATE apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the device under test is operable to allocate an entire sector for a user space applications.

5. The ATE apparatus of claim 4 , wherein an entire sector of the odd sector size or non-standard sector size of the device under test having is free of protection information.

6. An automatic test equipment (ATE) apparatus comprising:
a host bus adapter coupled to a load board between a host device tester and one or more devices under test; and
one or more field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) coupled to the load board;
wherein the one or more devices under test support an odd sector size or non-standard sector size;
wherein the host device tester executes an operating system that does not support the odd sector size or non-standard sector size; and
wherein the host bus adapter is configured to translate memory accesses received from the host device tester using a first communication protocol interface to memory accesses using a second communication protocol interface to send to the one or more devices under test; and
wherein the one or more field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) is configured to generate at a hardware level repeatable test patterns sized to fit the odd sector size or non-standard sector size of the one or more devices under test.

7. The ATE apparatus of claim 6 , wherein:
the first communication protocol interface comprises a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) protocol interface; and
the second communication protocol interface comprises a serial attached small computer system interface (SAS) protocol interface.

8. The ATE apparatus of claim 6 , wherein the host bus adapter is further configured to:
receive memory access results on the second communication protocol interface from the one or more devices under test; and
pass the memory access results to the load board.

9. The ATE apparatus of claim 7 , wherein the host bus adapter comprises a third-party host bus adapter.

10. A method of accessing memory of one or more devices under test comprising:
receiving, by a load board, a memory access from a host device tester on a first communication protocol interface, wherein an operating system of the host device tester does not support an odd sector sizes or a non-standard sector sizes;
passing, by the load board, the memory access from the host device tester to a host bus adapter and a field programmable gate array;
translating, by the host bus adapter, the memory access of a first communication protocol to the memory access of a second communication protocol:
generating, by the field programmable gate array at a hardware level, tester patterns of the memory access for an odd sector size or non-standard sector size of the one or more devices under test; and
sending, by the host bus adapter, the odd sector size or non-standard sector size memory access including the tester patterns to the one or more devices under test on a second communication protocol interface, wherein the one or more devices under test support the odd sector size or the non-standard sector size memory access.

11. The method according to claim 10 , further comprising:
generating, by a user space application of the host device tester, the memory access having a memory buffer of increased size based on the odd sector size or the non-standard sector size; and
sending, by the operating system of the host device tester, the memory access having the memory buffer of increased size to the load board on the first communication protocol interface.

12. The method according to claim 10 , further comprising:
receiving, by the one or more devices under test, the odd sector size or non-standard sector size memory access request on the second communication protocol interface from the host bus adapter; and
performing, by the one or more devices under tests, the odd sector size or non-standard sector size memory access.

13. The method according to claim 12 , further comprising:
sending, by the one or more devices under test, a memory access result to the host bus adapter on the second communication protocol interface;
receiving, by the host bus adapter, the memory access result, on the second communication protocol interface, from the one or more devices under test;
passing, by the host bus adapter, the memory access result to the load board; and
performing, by the load board, a test analysis based on a corresponding memory access and the memory access result.

14. The method according to claim 10 , wherein the first communication protocol interface comprises a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) interface.

15. The method according to claim 10 , wherein the second communication protocol interface comprises a serial attached small computer system interface (SAS) protocol interface.

16. The method according to claim 10 , wherein the odd sector size or non-standard sector size comprises a sector size selected from a group consisting of 520 bytes per sector (BPS), 528 BPS, 4104 BPS and 4224 BPS.

Assignees

• Advantest Corp

Inventors

• Yuan Chi
• Malisic Srdjan

Classifications

• G06F13/4282 Primary

  on a serial bus, e.g. I2C bus, SPI bus (on daisy chain buses G06F13/4247) · CPC title

• G06F2213/0028

  Serial attached SCSI [SAS] · CPC title

• G06F2213/0026

  PCI express · CPC title

• G06F13/42

  Bus transfer protocol, e.g. handshake; Synchronisation · CPC title

• G01R31/2834

  Automated test systems [ATE]; using microprocessors or computers (G01R31/317 takes precedence; ATE for detection of defective computer hardware G06F11/2736) · CPC title