The use of customized high level drivers in ATE systems offers many advantages to the system and application developers.

Reusable software at system level
High level drivers are structured to provide specific low level commands to the target instrument to achieve the desired functions. Once the needed high level functions are defined, a set of low level commands for the specific instrument are inserted into the high level drivers to achieve the required result. This protects the application programs from instrument obsolescence. All that is required to change to a new instrument is to provide a new set of low level commands while retaining the original high level parameters and functions so that applications can run transparently with the new instruments.

Concentrate on needed functions - reduce parameters and complexity
Many test instruments offer a vast array of functions to offer a great amount of versatility for the end user. However in many situations these many options can lead to long parameter lists, programming complexity, and confusion for the application developer. By analyzing system requirements, the list of needed functions and parameters can often be minimized, and high level drivers can be developed to provide user friendly commands to the application developer. This reduces application development time while maintaining optimum performance of the instrument..

Desktop debug
High level drivers can provide a means to simulate stimulus and response data for each instrument in a desktop environment. This enables the application developer to thoroughly unit test the application software in the office without the need to use the usually scarce test equipment. The two main benefits of this are 100% unit test capability and reduced machine time debugging. Often much test code goes unverified because the resources and time to introduce the faults needed to achieve 100% software unit test in the test machine environment are not attainable. With the use of desktop debug, application software can be 100% unit tested while freeing up test machine resources to be used in final test where they are really needed. By using this method, 85% to 90% of test development often can be done at the desk without the use of the actual test machine

Faster application development
The use of high level drivers decreases application development time. The application programmer now has a limited set of user friendly commands from which to choose. These functions are guaranteed to work as defined and reduce the confusion over which combination of low level functions to use to achieve a specific result. Also the application software can now be thoroughly unit tested which reduces the need to debug software issues in the difficult machine environment.

Better throughput
The high level drivers are designed and developed by the system level programmer who has more experience and knowledge of the instruments than the average application programmer. This lets the system level developer concentrate on the task of creating drivers that provide optimum performance of the instrumentation to enhance throughput of the final system.

Test design consistency
Often with many application developers working on a system, the many combinations of instruments and low level drivers result in an adhoc array of test designs and implementations. With the use of high level drivers, a variety of applications can be satisfied while providing a more congruent use of test instruments and reusable designs. Often application developers come up with software that is truly reusable in other applications when high level drivers are used.

Native language
In some test systems a high level or native language is used. By using high level drivers, test instruments can be added to the original test system while maintaining native like commands to use these instruments.

Complex Instruments
High level drivers are especially important when using high complexity, high performance instruments. High level drivers can provide a relatively simple interface to otherwise complex instruments while maintaining a high level of performance of the instrument.