Abstract or Demonstration Description: Mixed signal circuits are a large and rapidly growing semiconductor business within the state of Texas as well as on a national level. In response to the increasing need for qualified entry level test, product and validation engineers in mixed-signal electronics, a set of high-level courses have been developed at Texas A&M University with the goal of teaching students the art of mixed-signal testing. External industrial support was acquired to develop course material, renovate, and equip the Texas Instruments Mixed-Signal Test Laboratory, support faculty and staff, and attract high caliber students to the program. Three semiconductor test courses have been developed with extensive support from Texas Instruments, National Instruments as well as Teradyne, covering topics from basic mixed-signal Integrated Circuit (IC) testing, Data Converter Testing as well as first silicon Validation and Verification (V&V). The Texas Instruments Mixed Signal Test Laboratory facility was developed to support all three courses and was designed to simulate a standard test floor environment. Equipment available to the students to support the V&V class includes state of the art bench equipment such as spectrum analyzers, arbitrary waveform generators, and network analyzers in addition to PXI instrumentation. These are all integrated using LabVIEW and TestStand. The Mixed-Signal test courses utilize a Teradyne FLEX and two Eagle 364 Mixed-Signal IC testers along with simulator stations. This presentation will review the course content of the three course offerings as well as analyze the potential student output from a focused program such as this. Texas A&M currently has approximately 24,000 engineering students and Engineering Technology graduates approximately 20% of the graduates from the Dwight Look College of Engineering.
