There absolutely is test hardware for the functioning of chips. After all, those datasheet numbers have to come from somewhere, right? ;-) Before I got into ro

There absolutely is test hardware for the functioning of chips. After all, those datasheet numbers have to come from somewhere, right? ;-) Before I got into robotics, I worked in the semiconductor world as a test and product engineer for a couple of IC manufacturers. A lot of my job involved figuring out how to test every parameter we were going to put on the datasheet, writing code to test it quickly, and then doing statistical analysis of the results over thousands upon thousands of devices to make sure they met requirements. It was an interesting experience. We used some very high end test equipment, made by companies like Teradyne, and for each part (or family of parts in some cases), we would make a custom board which would mate to the test equipment on one side, and had sockets for the part we were testing, along with any support circuitry required. I think the problem with doing some sort of acceptance testing is that unless you buy the parts directly from the manufacturer or their distributors, it's very hard to verify that the part meets it's specs, unless you already have this kind of dedicated testing equipment and code, especially when you want to start measuring analog parameters (current consumption, logic levels, etc.), and don't think it would be worth the trouble in most cases. (Military / Space may be a special case, where critical parts may stop being manufactured by the original manufacturer and they do have to do this sort of thing, but as far as I know, it isn't typical).