FastScan and FlexTest Reference Manual, V8.6_4
5-2
Distributed FlexTest
Figure 5-1. Master and Slave Workstations
Distributed FlexTest checks for licenses according to the following:
•Master Process - A master process is required to have a full FlexTest
license and a distributed key (another full FlexTest license).
•Slave Process - A slave process is required to have a full FlexTest license
and a distributed key (another full FlexTest license).
Different types of workstations can be used for parallel execution of FlexTest. For
example, parallel ATPG may be invoked on a group of machines consisting of
HP-UX, Sun Solaris, and IBM AIX machines.
Parallelism during ATPG mode is exploited using the data-parallelism afforded
by distributing faults across processes. Due to the differences in the parallel and
serial execution environments and due to the non-determinism during parallel
execution, some variance in fault coverage and test vector lengths is unavoidable.
However, the parallel ATPG implementation tries to minimize such effects. Both
static and dynamic load balancing methods are used to equalize run-time loads
across machines or processors and thus improve the overall throughput. To assist
the load balancing algorithms, you can optionally provide the relative speeds of
various machines in the parallel pool.
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FlexTest
Master
Master
Slave Slave
Process