Automatic Source Code Analysis And Conversion Of C Language IC ATE Application Programs

Recent years see the rapid development of IC industry, as well as the evolvement and replacement of IC ATE (Automatic Test Equipment), which calls for more diverse and efficient methods to convert test application programs from old ATE software platforms to new ones. This work employs reverse software engineering techniques to recognize test concept and extract test information from source test program codes. For a kind of ATE C language procedural test application program, it first parses the application source code to obtain abstract data structure, like the AST, to describe the program. Besides, a mini query description language is designed and implemented to prepare a knowledge base of the ATE applications. So queries are performed and thus original software field concepts are aggregated and abstracted into ATE engineering field concepts. On this basis is information extracted. After that, application program of the new ATE platform can be generated. Thus the program conversion is done with enhanced efficiency compared to traditional ATE program conversion procedures.