The modern electronic testing has a forty year history. Test
professionals hold some fairly large conferences and numerous workshops,
have a journal, and there are over one hundred books on testing. Still,
a full course on testing is offered only at a few universities, mostly
by professors who have a research interest in this area. Apparently,
most professors would not have taken a course on electronic testing when
they were students. Other than the computer engineering curriculum being
too crowded, the major reason cited for the absence of a course on
electronic testing is the lack of a suitable textbook. For VLSI the
foundation was provided by semiconductor device techn- ogy, circuit
design, and electronic testing. In a computer engineering curriculum,
therefore, it is necessary that foundations should be taught before
applications. The field of VLSI has expanded to systems-on-a-chip, which
include digital, memory, and mixed-signalsubsystems. To our knowledge
this is the first textbook to cover all three types of electronic
circuits. We have written this textbook for an undergraduate
"foundations" course on electronic testing. Obviously, it is too
voluminous for a one-semester course and a teacher will have to select
from the topics. We did not restrict such freedom because the selection
may depend upon the individual expertise and interests. Besides, there
is merit in having a larger book that will retain its usefulness for the
owner even after the completion of the course. With equal tenacity, we
address the needs of three other groups of readers.
