Provisioning and use of security tokens to enable automated test equipment

1. Automated test equipment, comprising:

a plurality of hardware components, at least two of which provide a common test feature; and

program code to:

i) access a number of security tokens, each token of which grants rights to use one or more test features, without specifying a particular hardware component on which the test features are to be enabled; and

ii) if a plurality of security tokens granting rights to use the common test feature are available, enable the common test feature on plural user-selected ones of the hardware components that provide the common test feature, as permitted by the plurality of security tokens.

2. The automated test equipment of claim 1 , further comprising a plurality of automated testers amongst which said plurality of hardware components are distributed.

3. The automated test equipment of claim 2 , further comprising a security token server for maintaining said number of security tokens.

4. The automated test equipment of claim 1 , wherein the program code checks out any security token that is relied on to enable a test feature, thereby changing the status of the relied on security token to unavailable.

5. The automated test equipment of claim 4 , wherein said number of security tokens comprise floating security tokens, and wherein said program code provides a mechanism to:

check in a security token; and

disable a test feature that was previously enabled by the checked in security token; and

returning the status of the checked in security token to available.

6. The automated test equipment of claim 1 , wherein the hardware components comprise channel cards, each channel card comprising a plurality of I/O pins for interfacing with a device under test.

7. The automated test equipment of claim 6 , wherein at least one of said security tokens grants rights to use one or more test features on a particular channel card of an automated tester, without specifying a particular channel card on which the test features are to be enabled.

8. The automated test equipment of claim 1 , wherein at least one of said security tokens grants rights to use one or more test features on a number of I/O pins for testing a device under test, without specifying on which or how many hardware components the pins can reside.

9. The automated test equipment of claim 1 , wherein said common test feature is a scalable test feature.

10. The automated test equipment of claim 1 , wherein said common test feature is selected from the group consisting of:

test speed, storage for test vectors, storage for test waveforms, and storage for test drive edges.

11. A method for providing automated test equipment to a user, comprising:

providing a number of hardware components to the user, at a cost that values a base and potential value of the hardware components, wherein the potential value of a hardware component values potential test features of the hardware component, and wherein the potential test features are not usable until they are enabled via one or more security tokens;

providing to said user program code that allows the user to enable said potential test features;

offering a plurality of security tokens to the user, each security token of which i) enables at least one of said potential test features, but ii) does not specify any particular one of the user's hardware components on which the potential test features are to be enabled; and

in response to a request by the user, providing requested ones of said offered security tokens to the user, at costs that value the potential test features enabled by the security tokens.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein ones of said security tokens are provided to the user with associated use periods.

13. The method of claim 11 , wherein ones of said security tokens are provided to the user with associated expiration dates.

14. The method of claim 11 , wherein said program code provides a mechanism to enable a portion of said potential test features in the absence of the security tokens that are required to do so; said method further comprising:

periodically polling said program code for an itemization of said potential test features that have been enabled in the absence of required security tokens; and

charging the user for the potential test features that were enabled in the absence of required security tokens.

15. The method of claim 11 , wherein said security tokens are provided to the user as encrypted ASCII text strings.

16. The method of claim 11 , wherein said security tokens are provided to the user over the internet.

17. A computer-based method for operating automated test equipment, comprising:

loading a test program for a device under test;

determining what features of the automated test equipment (ATE) are necessary to execute the test program;

determining the availability of security tokens needed to enable the features of the ATE that are necessary to execute the test program;

if there are not enough available security tokens to execute the test program, prompting a user with options for obtaining the required security tokens; and

ensuring that the security tokens needed to execute the test program are checked out to the ATE that will execute the test program.

18. The computer-based method of claim 17 , wherein said features that are determined comprise test speed and storage for test vectors.

19. The computer-based method of claim 17 , wherein said options for obtaining the required security tokens comprise causing automated test equipment that will not execute the test program to relinquish at least one security token that it has checked out.

20. The computer-based method of claim 17 , wherein said options for obtaining the required security tokens comprise purchasing the required security tokens.

21. The computer-based method of claim 17 , wherein said options for obtaining the required security tokens comprise triggering an overuse policy.

22. The computer-based method of claim 17 , further comprising releasing said required security tokens after said test program has been executed.