D

1
DT Education Training in Europe What are the
Main Challenges?Some thoughts and experiences

• Raimund Ubar,
• Tallinn Technical University
• ESTONIA

2
Test Issues and Engineering Education

• The importance of test (fault diagnosis) as a
  teaching objective is underestimated in
  traditional engineering education
• Test is taught usually as a subtopic in a design
  course
• It is taught as an independent discipline only
  when it is a hobby horse of the professor
• Why?
• Test is interpreted as a nonproductive issue (vs.
  design)
• The number of courses that should be taught at
  universities doubles in a decade (Tenhunen, EWME,
  Lausanne, April 2004)

3
Didactical Issues

• Fault Diagnosis is not only a Digital DT related
  issue, it has an important didactive role for
  engineering education in general
• It is a method to learn how to ask right
  questions
• It develops the ability of analysing cause-effect
  relationships
• It is looking for answers to the questions like
  what is the reason of what happened
• 
  ---------
• Logic world (digital systems) because of its
  inherent logical complexity could be the best
  objective for learning the concepts of diagnostic
  analysis for any technical systems in general

4
Test Issues and DT Education

• What is the University?
• A student is not coming to university to be
  taught, he is coming to learn how the
  professor thinks
• Students should not be asked to press simply on
  buttons in labs to get results which only confirm
  what they know already
• The real targets of education are creativity,
  critical thinking, problem solving skills
• Therefore,
• Learning Test at a university should be research
  oriented
• The test issues because of their complexity can
  be really understood only by hands-on laboratory
  research

5
Problems Commercial test tools for using in
university laboratories are too complex and
expensive They may develop skills, but they do
not educate How to cross during a single course
the gap between introductory trivial issues and
hands-on research oriented learning?
6
Our Experience

• At TU Tallinn a teaching environment has been
  developed to introduce students into the world of
  Digital Test
• It is a combination of
• playing with internet based simple living
  pictures, and
• hands-on training with a set of commercial design
  tools, and low-cost university tools
• Living pictures (applets) target introductory
  teaching issues, and can be used
• by the teacher during lectures,
• by students for self-learning purposes,
  independent on time and place, and
• by the teacher during exams
• Hands-on experiments target more advanced
  research teaching issues

7
Living Pictures
Test generation Signal values for fault
activation and propagation can be inserted
directly on connections Fault simulation The
test vectors can be inserted manually or
generated automatically Fault diagnosis
Sequential method (guided probing) and
combinational procedure (by processing fault
tables) are supported
The game-like character raises the students'
curiosity Because of interaction the learning
process becomes more efficient
8
Applets for Learning RT Level Test

• Task list
• Micropro-gramming
• RTL Design
• Fault simulation
• Test program design
• BIST architectures

9
TT Tool Set for Hands-On Training
Methods Single fault Parallel Deductive
Fault models Stuck-at-faults Stuck-opens Delay
faults
Methods Deterministic Random Genetic
Levels Gate Macro
Test Generation
Fault Simulation
Fault Location
Design
Test
BIST Simulation
Methods BILBO CSTP Store/Generate
Fault Table
Fault Diagnosis
Test Optimization
10

• The number of courses that should be taught at
  universities doubles in a decade
• Test as a teaching objective has an intensive
  didactic content
• A student is not coming to university to be
  taught, he is coming to learn how the professor
  thinks
• Learning test should be coupled with research